


Joe Spooky is Real and Also My Boyfriend

by jojotier



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/F, Fluff, Horror, Human/Monster Romance, Investigations, M/M, Mystery, POV Alternating, Reverse Vampirism, Season/Series 02, The Hunt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:53:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22743553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jojotier/pseuds/jojotier
Summary: Tim starts dating a mister Joe Spooky and Jon refuses to believe him. Martin just wants everyone to be happy.Even with the omnipresent mystery of who killed Gertrude Robinson, reports of a vampire and a reverse-vampire, and humans beginning to crave human blood, there's the makings of a romantic comedy somewhere in there when everyone's gay and pining! That is, if only things didn't end up feeling like a horror movie, most days.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims, Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives)/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 33
Kudos: 93





	1. Sigh

**Author's Note:**

> Howdy! I know I have too many WIPs for other fandoms but I couldn't resist this- my first real fic for Magnus Archives! This is set around episode 52. Decided to take a humorous little concept and, in true TMA fashion, make it suspenseful... make it horror...... make it gay............
> 
> Sorry if this first chapter is a little dry- as I have chapters from other POVs, the situation will seem a lot less dire!! Until it doesn't ;)

Timothy Stoker had been sitting at his desk, sighing, for the past few minutes.

Jon tended to not be in the business of his coworkers (at least, _before_ their little… situation, with a certain maggot hive), but he couldn’t help but feel as if this was odd. Even by Tim standards.

Tim was already somewhat suspicious on account of everyone being, as of now, suspicious, but the way that he had carried himself had at least been… familiar. Tim was perplexingly extroverted on any given day and often went about with a cheer that was remarkably out of place in the ever dimming lights of the Archives; that was to be expected. 

He had off-color humor, often something raunchy on the forefront of his mind and tip of the tongue, and usually when Jon glanced in at him, he was either being incredibly useful to actual work or incredibly useful to the statistics of social media researchers everywhere. Usually it was the latter, if Jon caught him at his desk, since Tim tended toward jumping at fieldwork any chance he got- said something about how just sitting around made him antsy, once.

Jon could deal with that. Even if the devil-may-care attitude meant that Tim was adept in dodging and weaving through any subtle, prying questioning with careful put-upon ignorance or deflecting with carefree banter, it at least meant that Tim wasn’t aware enough of the investigation to change his tactics of misdirection. Or, if Jon was wrong in his suspicions- and… and, he wouldn’t have been lying, if he said he hoped that he was wrong- at the very least it meant that Tim was still plain old Tim. 

But Tim, sitting at his desk, picking at one of the edges of the many stickers he’d slapped onto the company issue laptop while staring at the wood of the back of the desk in front of him, was… weird. Jon was certainly a little unnerved by it. He already had Sasha acting odd since the attack, and to have Tim starting to act off, too… 

Jon carefully cleared his throat, crossing his arms loosely over his chest in what he assumed would look at least _somewhat_ professional. Tim started, narrow shoulders pitching up in some mildly cartoonish expression of surprise as he spun around in his chair. He wasn’t expecting anyone, which made sense- Martin was currently off following up on Mr. Brown himself, and Sasha was God knows where. By all means, it should have just been Tim in this room, sighing. 

“Hey!” Tim said, getting a hold of himself incredibly quickly and flashing a bright grin, “Boss, man, you scared the living daylights outta me- don’t tell me you’ve started embracing the whole spooky thing you got goin’ on?”

Jon frowned, primarily because in what world was he cultivating a… “spooky thing”? Then again, it could have just been Tim teasing him again. Or Tim deflecting after being caught. Most probably both. Jon didn’t address it, instead saying, “I should say not. I came to see if you finished double-checking the Montauk file?” 

“Oh! Oh yeah, yeah, totally,” Tim said, opening up his laptop and lifting it up slightly, pulling several sheets from underneath the keyboard. “I actually went back to Julia’s- the daughter’s? When you were going through the whole thing with the skepticism and dry stuff like that, you mentioned that the lightbulb in Montauk’s cell had blown out? But you didn’t mention that the entire ward had been blacked out-”

“I’m aware,” Jon said drily, fingers twitching slightly. “And I’m sure that you _are_ aware that the only reason we didn’t look as far into the specifics of the prison is that it didn’t initially appear to have relevance?”

“Well yeah, but in light of recent stuff, y’know,” Tim gestured with the sheets in one hand, twirling his wrist in a surprisingly elegant motion, “it’d be good to get that fix on record! There’s this guy down in research who’s got his eye on the Montauk case as a possible avenue for his thesis- real sweet guy-”

Jon, who was not at all keen to be on the subject of statement addendums, quickly changed the subject, “Yes, yes, I’m sure he’s yet another lovely person I will never care to meet. I mean, did you get anywhere with the subject of Peter Gordo?” 

Tim actually frowned a little at that, shifting so that he was settled in his chair with his legs hanging partially off the side, instead of under the desk. Another odd detail. Tim didn’t usually sit in chairs like a normal person, even when he was working. “... Alrighty then- about that. I can’t actually find anything about the guy.”

Jon’s frown deepened. “Nothing at all?”

“I mean, yeah? Literally just said that,” Tim said, and the hint of tetchiness to his tone was enough to catch Jon by surprise. And also to make him suspicious. Not that Jon wasn’t already suspicious of a lot of what Tim was doing, with the threat of Gertrude’s killer still walking amongst the archival staff, but it was a touch of new suspicion that was notable enough to be commented on. 

Tim eventually continued, “Look, I thought that I had a lead with looking at records with the nearby Jobcentre, if he was looking for a job, or with trying to find an address, but there’s pretty much nothing. I can’t even find any close family of the man who might know where the hell he went? Man just dropped off the face of the earth.”

Jon sighed. “... Well. Guess there can be nothing for it,” He supposed that, perhaps, this might have been the cause of Tim’s odd behavior? Despite everything, the man was good at what he did. Jon could imagine the frustration of being handed a case that had no end in sight… Which is usually why he sent those over to Martin. (Though now, he didn’t give them to Martin due to perceived incompetence- Martin had more than proven himself. Now, he gave them because Martin was becoming a little too excessive with the tea breaks, seeming to find every reason to intrude when Jon wasn’t directly reading a statement to 'check' on him-) 

“I mean, there’s still some stuff,” Tim said, leaning an arm over the back of his chair and leaning his head on it. 

“I believe I may just leave that to Sasha, then, if that’s all the same to you,” Jon said, businesslike. He could press more about Tim’s odd behavior, but Tim had a penchant for avoiding anything direct. And Jon still had to be subtle. Very subtle. And if this was truly innocuous academic frustration, then all the better to free up Tim’s time for another case that could use his talents and connection. “If you’d like to take a lunch break, I may have another case in regards to-”

“Wait!” Tim interrupted, eyes snapping open wide and body jolting up straight. Jon blinked at Tim’s sudden lapse in composure before Tim, apparently recognizing that was a little too sudden, raised his hands in a placating little gesture as he smiled, hastily cheerful, “Wait a second now, Bossman, I didn’t even get to say what stuff needed doin’! ‘Sides, wouldn’t wanna trouble Sasha! Sasha’s got enough on her plate!”

“You said that you couldn’t find anything on Peter Gordo?” Jon reiterated, eyes narrowing. Now, this was _certainly_ unlike Tim. Tim, for all his remarkably laid back attitude and sometimes lackluster work effort, never had an objection to changing duties. Perhaps a little quip or a joke, but never a serious objection that could lead him to- horror of horrors- take on more work. He tended to take everything in stride. 

If he wanted to linger on this case, it meant that there was something in it for him. 

Jon’s mind flashed back to the credentials of Timothy Stoker- the prestige, the pay, the respect earned. He was reminded of the simple question of, _what lead Timothy Stoker to work at the Magnus Institute?_ This, he realized, could be an important breakthrough.

“I couldn’t, but,” Tim held his right hand up a little higher, tone pitching up the same way a used car salesman gave his pitch. Jon hated salespeople. “I have one more thing I want to try. See, there’s this guy I met in a bar last week- real swell guy, just had,” Tim’s eyes, alarmingly, took on an odd gleam to them, “the prettiest smile you ever saw. Turns out, he works with the General Register Office. We hit it off, y’know? I could probably siddle in, get cozy with him, and…”

Jon’s brows furrowed because, by all means, it was an absolutely ludicrous plan! “Tim, do you have any idea how many Peter Gordos could be scattered over England? It would take you ages to sort through it all- if you even _could,_ then there’s the matter of the sheer amount of Peter Gordos who must have died-”

“Boss, bossman, listen,” Tim said quickly, “the way I figure it, it’d take maybe a few long nights, but! This guy, he’d be more than willing,”

“I don’t believe it will be necessary-” Jon started. After all, when all was said and done, Peter Gordo was more or less a footnote in a larger story. There was still the question of Maxwell Rayner, and where the Montauks might have fallen in with his defunct Church. Then, it hit him. “... You’re not using company time to seduce some poor bastard.”

Tim leaned back, placing a hand over his heart, which was a Tim mannerism meaning “I was _absolutely_ going to do the thing you’ve just accused me of doing, and still will.” Tim said, “What? Little ol’ me? Seduce? Why, I’ve never seduced a soul- ‘sides, if any ‘seducing’ was done, it’s already pretty much over,” Tim shrugged. “All I’m doing is a little maintenance, you know? Do you really think that a single night of ‘relations’ is enough to keep my allies?” His eyebrows gave a jaunty wiggle, which Jon pointedly ignored.

“Regardless, it would be a fruitless endeavor,” Jon said, although he was more than a little unnerved by Tim’s insistence on mentioning his… relations. Sure, it was indeed an asset, but Jon was uncomfortable with exploiting them- and was even more uncomfortable with the idea of… maintenance. 

“I mean, maybe this time,” Tim admitted, “but what if we need it in the future?”

“Then you can perform ‘maintenance’ then, I assure you.” Jon sniffed.

“It’s-! I don’t think so,” Tim’s hands slowly fluttered down, worrying over the back cushion of the chair. “‘Cause- cause, you know. He seems to… be connected to Gordo.”

Jon’s mind started whirring a mile a minute at the new information, and at the implication of Tim only bringing this up now. Was it a lie, to get Jon to allow him to work with this stranger? Why was he only mentioning it now? Did he not say anything because he was defending this mystery man from the bar? 

In any case. This was something that couldn’t be allowed to sit there. “... I see. Tell me- who is this man of yours?”

“He’s not my-” Tim quickly cut himself off, which was just another nail in the coffin of ‘Behavior That Tim Should Not Be Exhibiting And Yet, For Some Reason, Is’. He usually wasn’t shy about his relations with others, being the… free love, sort. “Okay, so, his name is Joe.”

“... Go on,” Jon prompted. 

“Apparently, he and Gordo dated for a bit before he disappeared-”

“No, I mean.” Jon interrupted, holding his arms in a tighter cross over his chest. This was getting to be an uncomfortable position, actually. “Full name, please.”

Tim hesitated. “... Yeahhh, I don’t, uh. You’re not gonna believe me?”

Jon said, “I assure you, there isn’t much that would make me believe your reasoning to be rational already.”

Tim’s lips pursed as he ran a hand through his hair, already tousled with hair gel. “His name’s Joseph.”

“Last name?” Jon pressed.

“... Spooky.”

Jon stared. “... Joseph Spooky.” 

Tim weakly said, “Joe Spooky, for short,”

Jon considered asking Tim what in the actual hell he wanted from the General Register Office, of all things. Why did Tim have such a sudden interest, and if all he wanted was with the GRO, why go through the trouble of joining the Magnus Institute first? Was there something here that having ‘relations’ wouldn’t give him access to?

Jon, recognizing that dumping all of this on Tim would come out in a highly paranoid stream, just said, “I’m assigning you to look into the Doe Simmons case.” Tim deflated, hunching over in his seat.

“... Alright. Got it.” 

“I’ll grab the file.”

Walking through the branching halls towards his office, Jon was just left with more questions. If Tim was truly some sort of mastermind attempting to infiltrate the Institute for some unspecified goal or another, Jon would have _at least_ thought he would have been able to come up with a name that was actually believable for his imaginary ally. Or, if this ally was real, why hide his name? Just what was Tim’s game here?

Jon slipped his tape recorder from his back pocket, preparing to record a supplemental when from around the corner _Martin_ just _had_ to slam into him and knock the recorder out of his hands. _“Dammit,”_ Jon muttered, crouching down to gather the device from where it lay amongst the shameful amount of paper that Martin had dropped in the confusion. Fantastic work, just throwing all those case-sensitive files around!

“Ah- s-sorry, sorry,” Martin profusely apologized, the tips of his ears flushing red from where they poked out through his black hair, slowly growing shaggy and curling at the edges. The man needed a damn trim. “Jesus Jon, you need to not scare me like that-”

“Perhaps if you weren’t running through the halls with sensitive material,” Jon replied, somewhat peevishly as he huffed out a breath and started to help Martin gather up the loose papers. Couldn’t let them languish on the ground while Martin was fumbling about. 

“H-how did you- actually, just,” Martin let out a breath, a sheepish expression crossing his rounded face, “just, we’ll talk, later, about the- the spooky, ah, walking thing,”

“I’m not doing anything _spooky,”_ Jon muttered, slightly cross as he stood and looked up at Martin. How Jon ended up the head of a team of god damn goliaths, he would never know. 

“Later- there’s, ah, the case? With Montauk,” Martin tried to fumble into saying something useful, which was… honestly, appreciated. After all, even if he couldn’t allow Tim to continue on the case due to suspected personal interest, Martin, at least, could continue. And last Martin had said, there had been a possible lead. 

“Right- you said you got in touch with the former Mrs. Brown?” Jon said, bleeding back into his more professional persona as he quietly slipped the recorder into his back pocket. He just hoped Martin was too distracted to notice- last thing he needed were more possible interruptions. 

“I did! She was, a really lovely woman,” Martin smiled fondly, holding the pile of papers to his chest as if to shield them from further collisions. “And we had a little spot of tea and a chat. Poor thing, though, she really had a rough time of it- though, um, that, that would be something I would only want to relay in, in private, due to the ah, sensitive nature of-”

“We’ll skip over that piece for now- is there anything in regards to the whereabouts of Brown?” Jon asked, a mite impatient. 

“There was a letter he sent her,” Martin said, thankfully taking the subject change in stride, “postmarked from Ireland. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear as though we have, ah, any contacts there that could help…”

“I see… a shame, then.” Jon decided that it was probably about time to end this case. “Come with me back to my office for your next assignment, then- I’ll be putting you on fact-checking a miss Doe Simmons’ statement, along with Tim.” He paused for a moment, before saying, “And… if you wouldn’t mind… I do have a favor to ask,”

“Yes?” Martin said immediately, ever eager to curry favor. Although it was still suspicious, it did have its uses- and Jon knew that if he worded it right, Martin wouldn’t suspect a thing. 

“Would you mind keeping an eye on Tim for me?” Jon asked, delicately choosing his words. “He was acting… a little… put off.”

“Put off?” Martin blinked, head tilting just the slightest bit to the side. But there was also a glimmer in his eyes- something a little too close to wariness. “... in what way?”

“Well, for one, he wasn’t working,” Jon said peevishly, to which Martin gave a little huff of incredulity, “and not in the normal way. His laptop was closed- wasn’t even on twitter, when he opened it up. He was just sitting there and… sighing.”

“... Sighing.” Martin said carefully.

“Sighing, and acting very un-Tim like when I told him he’d done enough work for the Brown case and could move on. He wanted to pull… long nights.” Jon said this with disdain, as though he himself didn’t constantly pull long nights. Of course, with himself it was different- he’d always been a bit of a workaholic. Tim was Tim- ready to run out the door the second the day had ended.

“Alright, that,” Martin said, eyebrows furrowing a little, “is a little odd. Though… are you sure it would be- be our place to keep an eye on him?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Jon asked, before remembering that talking to he’d gotten from Elias. Even Martin was beginning to catch on, he feared… “I- I’m worried, is all.” And suspicious. Actually, it was just the suspicion with maybe a touch of the worry. He almost wanted to tell Martin about all the other odd bits- about Tim going on about someone from a bar and giving him the dumbest alias imaginable if he were even real in the first place. But then that would look suspicious, wouldn’t it? 

Sure, Jon felt bad for using Martin like this- but it was a necessary precaution, not to say a word. And he was sure he wouldn’t feel so bad later on if it ended up being true that one of his assistants had killed Gertrude.

Martin’s eyes, soft blue, studied Jon for a moment. Jon wasn’t used to it, being really studied- and it set off an uncomfortable tingle in the base of his skull, a warmth curling up under his ribs, to see Martin examine him so intently. Whatever Martin was looking for, he’d apparently found it, because his gaze softened. “Alright. I’ll see if I can get Tim to tell me if anything’s the matter- so, no need to worry, alright?”

“That’s not exactly something under my control,” Jon said flatly, to which the corners of Martin’s lips curled up in a warm little smile. 

“I suppose so- now, um,” Martin finally glanced away, gaze catching on a totally uninteresting patch of wall, “about Simmons?”

“Right,” Jon said, beginning to walk. Even as he launched into an explanation of a woman claiming to have gone to a casino with a vending machine that caused a life or death stock market-esque game, Jon couldn’t shake the feeling that there was just something odd happening with Tim...


	2. Strange Surnames / Stranger Loves Worth Courting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will now pepper in the fact that everyone is gay and pining... (after dumping the whole spice container in) whoops
> 
> Martin's POV is fun!! He's sweet, but he's also a little mischievous, and personally, I cannot help but have mischievous Martins in my life... I hope you enjoy!

“- and Miss Simmons claims that the individual in question opened the emergency door and jumped.” Jon was saying, eyes skimming over the paper in his hands. “I’m sure that you can see why this would be a problem for a plane cruising at a little over ten thousand meters.”

Martin did not, in fact, see the problem. He had, however, definitely watched his fair share of documentaries in the wee hours of the morning when melatonin and sheer will weren’t enough to put him to sleep; he remembered, vaguely, watching something about how airplanes stay in the air. He nodded, as though he was not pulling anything out of his ass, “It’d take a lot of strength to open it, wouldn’t it? That’s… a lot of pressure. Far more than any normal human should be able to push back against- and to close it again...”

Jon glanced at him from over the top of the papers, cool brown eyes warming beneath the wire frames of his glasses like smooth stones heated in the sun. Really, Martin should have been well past the point of his heart fluttering, but- but well, here he was. Heart fluttering. 

He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from rambling more and ceded the floor to Jon, who said, “... Right. It was a miracle that it didn’t presumably crash.”

“So, this is a possible Fairchild case, then?” Martin asked. He recalled one or two cases with the name popping up, always in regards to some extreme sport. Simmons had described the build-up to that door opening to be  _ like  _ an extreme kind of game show- so it stood to reason...

Jon pulled an especially unimpressed face, lips twisting. “I highly doubt it. After you conduct your follow up- and possibly obtain the passenger records for flight A4130- I don’t see any need for further investigation.”

Martin, thankfully, was long past the point of shrinking away from Jon’s skepticism. Even before Jon crumpled rather like cotton candy dipped in a drop of water and spilling everything about what that skepticism truly held, the months of dreading worms sure did put things into perspective. And paranoia. Martin tried not to think about the paranoia bits, though he still scanned his eyes over his surroundings occasionally in case he could catch a glimpse of squirming silver bodies.

“I’ll, ah, still be looking into cross-referencing the case with the Fairchilds. Just in case.” Martin said, folding his hands in his lap.

Jon sighed. "Fine."

Martin smiled at that, deciding to see if he could push his luck. “Also! I really do think we should do- some kind of investigation? Into the vending machine bit-”

“Come off it, Martin- don’t tell me that you  _ actually believe  _ this account of… an evil neon vending machine.” Jon deadpanned, mouth set into a hard line that paired well with his sharp features.

Well, Martin was just going to have to shove  _ that  _ thought down with the rest of his growing list of things to repress! Especially since Jon was being rather tetchy and not at all deserving of running commentary until he can be both attractive  _ and  _ agreeable. Martin said levelly, “Well, maybe! Maybe yes. I mean, we had evil waves of worms coming through not too long ago- it’s hardly, hardly the strangest thing…”

“Perhaps, but this statement is already suspect, in more ways than one.” Jon said, fitting two elegant brown fingers underneath his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose, “I need your skill on more important matters-”

“I’m sure, yes, of-of course…” Martin ceded. He was going to follow up on the owner of the evil neon vending machine anyway. 

Still… it was such a little thing, hearing Jon acknowledge that Martin- well, that Martin  _ had _ skills. Even going as far as to say that he  _ needed  _ those skills on  _ more important matters-  _ just six months ago, he would have never believed that Jon would ever say anything like that, and now, here they were. Mentally kicking himself- partially because he needed to tune back into the conversation, partially because  _ dammit,  _ being so happy about appreciation he certainly earned was  _ a bit much-  _ he caught the tail end of Jon saying, “-- the General Register Office is not somewhere Tim will be going.”

That caught Martin somewhat off guard. When had they gotten onto the subject of Tim? “... Why’s that?”

“I suppose I forgot to mention when asking you to keep an eye on him,” Jon said, setting the papers of Doe Simmons’ statement in their file. “He seems to want to try his hand at… seducing his way into the GRO. He apparently thought it’d help with a statement sometime soon.”

That caught Martin’s attention. Tim was usually pretty confident in his ties- and for good reason. Martin certainly wasn’t immune to the sheer amount of charm the man exuded, and he’d be lying through his teeth if he tried to say Tim  _ wasn’t  _ one of the most attractive people he’d seen. Not even solely from a place of having a miniature crush on him for a week- it was just a fact of life. The sun shone, the sky was blue, and Timothy Stoker was sexy.

If Tim wanted to ‘try his hand’, Martin could only guess that whoever this mystery person was, Tim’s charms weren’t working their magic. Definitely a little surprising. “... I’ll keep that in mind while speaking to him. I’ll get a move on,” Jon handed over the file. Out of politeness, Martin muttered, “Thank you,” as he stood up to leave.

“Martin,” Jon said, twining his hands together and resting them on the desk in front of him. For a moment, he seemed uncomfortable in his own seat, shifting slightly to hide how stiff his spine had become, eyes downcast. “... Thank you. In advance. Your help in this is, ah… appreciated.”

Martin blinked, taken aback. Jonathan Sims wasn’t usually the type to express any degree of… gratitude. It made Martin’s heart skip in his chest, seeing Jon glancing at him through his long eyelashes. Martin wrapped his metaphorical hand around his heart to keep it steady. There wasn’t any wrangling in the wide smile that slipped over his face, though. “O-oh-! I- you’re, er, welcome. It’s, it’s really no trouble!”

There was a beat of silence, too quick to be properly awkward, but feeling as though it would immediately stretch out into awkwardness if left unchecked. 

Thankfully, Jon didn’t seem to want to linger any more than Martin did. He cleared his throat, leaning back with that imperious look on his face once again. “Quite. Now, off you go.”

“Right,” Martin said, ducking his head as he turned away to try and hide the fact that his wide smile hadn’t gone down any- not that. Not that Jon could see. With, with how Martin’s back was. Turned to him. Oh, Christ, Martin was a blustering idiot.

Just as Martin crossed the threshold of the door, two hands suddenly clamped over his shoulders, pulling him a step back. Martin just barely contained a shriek as Jon said, directly behind him, “Martin! One more thing!” Jesus, he hadn’t even heard Jon coming-

“Y-Yes?” Martin stammered, ears burning red as he turned to look at his boss. Jon looked up at him, eyes blazing in a way that meant he was about to get mired in something intense. Oh, geez… “Jon, seriously, that spooky thing you do when you w-”

“Has Tim ever tried to seduce you?”

Martin’s brain shorted out. He could already tell that his face and neck were going a nearly fluorescent shade of bright red, and his brain just would not work. There wasn’t really anything else to say for a moment, because Jon was looking at Martin intently, hands over Martin’s shoulders, asking if- if Tim had

Martin squeaked out, sounding more like a slowly deflating balloon than a human, “I-I’m sorry?”

“Timothy Stoker. Team flirt and general roguish personality? That Tim,” Jon reiterated slowly, as if this was a normal inquiry and not- not making sudden, explosive interrogation into his  _ love life,  _ “Has he ever flirted, courted, or otherwise attempted to seduce you, either for information or to get you into his bed?”

Martin made a high keening sound. What the genuine _fuck_ was going on _._ “N-No! _No?!_ I-I-I- wh- why- wait even if- even if he did, se-seduce me, I don’t- that’s none- that’s- who-who I’m seduced by-! It’s n-”

“Excellent,” Jon suddenly declared, retracting his hands and slamming the door in Martin’s face. Martin stood in front of Jon’s office door, gaping at the wood, holding the Doe Simmons file with a death grip. He tried to figure out what the hell sort of thought process led to…  _ that.  _ He could hear Jon behind the door, muttering something that could have been taken as either ‘supplemental’ or ‘supper’s lentil’ under his breath, masked by the loud ruffling of papers. 

Needless to say, he failed to understand absolutely anything.

So Martin just started down the hallway towards where the assistant desks were, desperately trying to shove down his furious blush. What else could he do? Sure, he could march into Jon’s office and ask what the hell that was about (and, he promised himself, he  _ would  _ do that later), but if he did that, the answer may just destroy him. Martin was in, no fit state. To deal with the consequences of that. Best to let Jon ride out the wave of his mania and just, just not touch it with a seven-foot pole for a long while.

(That, and, well… what if the response as to why Jon wants to know if Martin has been seduced was exactly what he wanted to hear? No, no- Martin sternly told himself not to bother with the thought.)

Martin only pushed open the door to the assistants’ room when he was sure that his blush had dimmed down to a far more acceptable pink. It might have brought Tim’s attention, but, well, Tim might catch wind of what happened anyway if anyone had overheard Jon’s spontaneous questioning, so. Into the room he went.

Really, Martin wasn’t seeing what all the fuss was about. Sure, Tim was seated so that his chair was far from his desk’s edge and he was bent nearly in half over said desk, sighing loudly as he scrolled through mobile Twitter, but the only odd thing that Martin could think of was that Tim was using mobile instead of laptop twitter. 

It  _ could  _ have been construed as Tim wanting to hide whatever he was scrolling through more easily. Or. It could have just been Tim using his phone because it was more comfortable in his position of turning halfway this way and that in his rolly chair. Nothing amiss here.

Martin, finally recovered enough to have normal human interactions, said, “Hey, Tim-! Got a new statement for us!”

Tim jumped halfway out of his seat, turning a full 360 in his chair before managing to settle into resting his hand over his heart, phone screen held against his chest. As if he totally meant to do that. He probably didn’t, but Martin was too polite to say anything. Tim gave a look of mock horror, “Martin! Don’t tell me you’ve adopted the ‘Sims skulk’ too- my heart won’t  _ last  _ like this!”

“Hm? You think I could… lurk?” Martin tilted his head, playing along. “Are you sure you weren’t just too absorbed in your, what do the kids call it… Tweeter?”

“Seriously Martin, we gotta get you on something other than MySpace one of these days,” Tim said as if Martin didn’t really know what other social medias were. Martin did. He just liked to get it wrong on purpose to watch people around him struggle to explain it to him, or on a few memorable occasions, show him what embarrassing stuff they posted in their attempts to get him interested. It was how he found out that John from research (who had never met Jon the Archivist yet had been the subject of a lengthy rant by Jon due to the horrors of sharing a name) was into vore, which, while absolutely horrifying in the moment was kind of funny in retrospect. 

Actually. “You know… sure. We could do it now, actually.” Martin said, smiling. 

Tim’s eyebrows raised high at that, expression falling into one of genuine surprise. “Wait, really? You, Martin Blackwood, researcher extraordinaire and worm-pocalypse bringer,” Martin winced a little at that last one, “want to squander precious company time to finally give into peer pressure and become hip with the youths.”

“I mean, sure?” Martin said, smile not faltering in the slightest. He was  _ quite  _ used to smiling when the situation called for it. “The statement’s a quick one, from what I’ve been told, so-”

“So the boss sent you back with a statement to check… and it was an easy one?” Tim’s eyebrows furrowed as he leaned forward, head tilting. “I was wondering why Jon wasn’t peeping in- he seemed to be in... a state.”

Martin was reminded of Jon’s question earlier and, against all better judgment or prayers to whatever gods populated the universe, he immediately went red again. “H-He,” He cleared his throat, trying to get rid of the voice crack as he tried to hide his blush. “Still. He was still in quite a state when I left.”

“Oooooh, I getcha,” Tim said, dark eyes glinting, “Lover’s tiff, then?”

Martin spluttered for a moment, holding the file closer to his chest. “T-Tim!! No, never- he- you know damn well why that’s not it,”

“Sorry, sorry,” Tim grinned, holding his free hand up placatingly. “It’s just way too fun to tease, Marts- can you blame a guy?”

“Yes,” Martin said immediately.

“Oof, ow,” Tim said, twirling in his seat with the nonexistent force of it. “My poor old heart, Martin, you’re crushing it right beneath your heels- surprised you don’t have more prospects lining up outside the door, doing that-”

“We should probably!” Martin said quickly, dropping the file in front of Tim, “Get on this case! We do have some missing persons-”

“Ah, got it, got it,” Tim said, sliding off of the subject maybe a little too easily. “Better get their records found, then- and then maybe find some couples’ counseling,”

Martin groaned, long and loud, and just hid his face behind his computer screen and started to work. The faster he left this conversation, the better. 

He left the file with Tim- after all, Martin was the one who’d gotten the full debriefing from Jon, and Martin didn’t want to relay it all again. The sooner this was done, the sooner he could go to lunch- there was supposed to be a new cafe opening up, and he wanted to check it out…

He was in the middle of searching through the school records of one “Brittany Bauer” (the apparent “owner” of the evil neon vending machine) when Tim suddenly stood up, making a show of stretching his arms up. He announced, “Welp! I couldn’t find a single record on Doe Simmons herself- think I’ll pop over to the GRO and see if I can get my hands on some files.”

One of Martin’s eyebrows raised as Tim said this, mildly bewildered. Jon had mentioned that Tim had a sudden fascination with the place- though, it was another thing to see Tim’s sudden eagerness in action. “No need,” Martin cheerfully said, switching the tabs over and holding his laptop up to show Tim. “I already found her birth certificate- apparently, she was embroiled in some sort of… “kin” drama? Online- so she’d posted it.” Hell if Martin knew what that meant. 

Tim deflated so quickly that Martin actually felt a little bad, even though objectively, Martin had done something good. Usually, Tim loved to have a little less work- but then again, didn’t everyone (excluding Jon)?

“Ahaha, yeah,” Tim gave a smile that showed off his dimples, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes, which looked rather like a kicked puppy, “thanks, Martin- don’t know what we’d do without you.”

“Who knows?” Martin said somewhat sardonically before settling his laptop back down. Then, after a moment, he remembered what Jon told him to tell Tim. Right. Dammit, he’d been so caught up earlier it must have slipped his mind. “Oh, also? I forgot to mention- Jon said you’re not to go to the GRO anyway. Waste of time, he says.”

“What!” Tim said, looking utterly affronted. His hand ran agitatedly through his hair for a moment as he fell back down into his seat. “Man, that is just- that’s really silly, really, just, dumb, handicapping an investigation like that when we need to use anything we can,”

“I mean, it’s hardly as if anyone’s given birth on that plane,” Martin shrugged a little.

“I mean, alright, sure, but…” Tim frowned a little more deeply before he muttered, “‘s not like I’d be the only one there anyway…”

“Oh?” Martin asked, eyebrow raising a little once again. “Of course not- after all, you wouldn’t be getting in without someone to let you in, I suppose,”

Tim’s head snapped towards Martin, eyes as wide as a deer caught in headlights, “How did you know that?!”

Martin blinked for a moment, looking over the divider dividing their desks with some measure of confusion. “Er… because… that’s what you do? You do quite a lot of ah- flirting your way into and out of danger.”

“... Oh! Oh, oh yeah,” Tim said as if surprised to learn this about himself. Maybe he was just surprised to have forgotten that about himself. Tim smiled wide as he shrugged. “Guess it just comes so naturally that I forget I’m doing it, heh-”

“So.” Martin said after a beat, “would there happen to be anything special about this connection?”

“What? Pfft, anything special,” Tim forced out a small laugh, leaning back in his seat, “Anything  _ special,  _ he says- nah, no, nope, not at all, there's just another lovely man who loves to help me out- nothing special or weird here,” Tim leaned back further in his seat and cursed sharply, jerking his body forward so that he didn’t fall backward in his chair. The wheels clattered a bit on the ground as they touched back down.

Martin’s other eyebrow raised to join the first. “Methinks the lad doth protest,” 

“I-I’m not  _ protesting,”  _ Tim said, and high on his cheekbones, there was the vaguest hint of a pink flush. Martin’s first thought was that Tim must have been one of those types who were really hard to get flustered, and damn, what a lucky bastard- his next thought was, oh, Tim was  _ flustered.  _

Martin just gave him a Look. “... Certainly.” 

Tim pointed at Martin accusingly. “You put those eyebrows down or so help me-”

“So if I were to suggest that, perhaps,” Martin couldn’t help smiling a little. Usually, he wasn’t so nosy, particularly not into the love lives of his coworkers- but as Tim’s friend and the usual object of the same teasing? Martin couldn’t resist a little payback. All in good fun, of course! “our dear Timothy may have feelings for a certain mysterious mister…” 

Tim’s cheeks pinkened just a touch more. “... Shut up.”

“Alright- would ‘pining’ be a better word?” Martin teased, resting his crossed arms on his desk and leaning forward. 

“I’m not pining!” Tim said, voice pitching up at the last word. “It’s- it’s not pining, if we both, you know. Reciprocate.” He paused, glancing down, presumably at his phone. “... I think.”

Martin’s smile widened, eyes crinkling at the corners. He couldn’t help it! Though teasing was a little fun, seeing Tim look- well, he wasn’t exactly happy with the teasing, but he seemed happy with this mystery lover boy of his, and that was exciting. Martin had seen Tim with his fair share of girlfriends and boyfriends in the past (sometimes at the same time, though Martin didn’t understand how someone could survive a poly relationship when it was so hard to keep track of which jokes one had used on which partner already- then again, Tim was always better at keeping track of humor), but this was the first time he seemed… almost shy about it.

“Congratulations!” Martin said, settling in. The statement was important, yes- but he could also stand to skip a lunch break that day too. Now that he thought about it, he probably didn’t have enough to go to that cafe, and he’d forgotten to make anything… “Oh, Tim- tell me all about him.”

Tim’s lips pursed for a moment, but he relaxed, a dopey grin crossing his face. “We~ll, since you asked so nicely- ah, shit, who am I kidding?” He gave a delirious little chuckle. “I wanted to tell someone  _ all day-  _ and I sure as hell wasn’t telling  _ Jon,”  _ Understandable, since Jon didn’t have the best track record in caring about love lives. Or not being a dick about it. Or not being a dick. “And Sasha…” 

Tim trailed off, glancing back down at his desk, though most likely not at his phone this time. Martin let out a small breath, just barely suppressing a wince. Sasha… hadn’t. Been the same. Since Prentiss, Martin meant. Sure, it had hurt Martin to see her change so drastically, but he and Sasha weren't nearly as close as she and Tim had been. She and Tim had become so alienated from each other, recently… Martin could only guess at how heart-wrenching it must have been. 

Martin slowly wheeled himself and his own chair around to Tim’s desk, squeezing one of Tim’s hands. Tim slowly breathed out and smiled at him in turn. Martin patted Tim’s hand encouragingly, smiling, “Well, I want to hear everything! He must have made quite the impression.”

“He- he definitely did! He made  _ such  _ an impression,” Tim said, not doing anything to push Martin away. Martin stayed crowded into Tim’s space as Tim leaned towards him conspiratorily, grinning. “Ha, I actually told the boss we met at a bar to throw him off- truth is, we live in the same building.”

“No,” Martin breathed, leaning his head in and getting the distinct feeling of being at a slumber party and not at, well, a place of business, “So close?!”

_ “Real  _ close,” Tim nodded, grin widening. “Okay, so- his name’s Joseph Spooky,"

Martin's eyebrows nearly flew off his face. "As in, his last name-"

Tim sighed loudly and dramatically. _"Yeah,_ his last name is Spooky- I swear it's true! He showed me an ID and everything!"

"I'll believe you then," Martin snorted, leaning forward a bit more, "Hardly the weirdest person I've come across, all things considered."

_ "Thank you,  _ Martin."

"Now, about how you met?"

Tim smiled broadly, launching back into his story. "Right. We actually met outside our apartment building last Friday, after I was getting back from Friday drinks…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned next week for Tim's first POV chapter, titled "didn’t think i could still have gay panic but now that i’m here i may as well be sexy about it" ! And stay tuned for the grand debut of Joe Spooky himself... and the debut of there being something Not Quite Right about him.... have a good night everyone!


	3. didn’t think i could still have gay panic but now that i’m here i may as well be sexy about it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just got done listening to 58 for the first time and felt so bad for Tim, wanted him to have at least One Good Thing so badly, that I wrote almost 5,000 words about good things happening to Tim in one sitting. I don't remember the last few hours tbh? The spirit of fanfic had possessed me yet again...
> 
> Now that all THAT's outta my system though, updates should be a little more sparse and regular!! Come back in say, 2 weeks? Yeah 2 weeks. I hope you enjoy! This chapter also features a little doodle of Mr. Spooky himself, with his strange pockmark scars...

It had been a rainy night when he met Joseph.

Last Friday’s Friday drinks had been maybe the best Tim had shown up at in recent memory- it was storming and wet and full of every dark and creepy-crawly thing you could imagine wriggling on the sidewalk (and Tim really, really tried not to imagine), but getting to the bar, it was warm. Gay bars always felt warmer than regular ones, Tim had found, both literally and in terms of the people that showed up- and it was an absolutely perfect place to kick his feet up and sip on the fruitiest cocktail on the menu.

If he remembered right, while Tim had gotten the fruitiest cocktail, Martin had definitely gotten the sweetest. He was still wondering how Martin could stomach it with less than a stomach of iron, god damn.

Even if it was just himself and Martin, it was the first time in a while that Tim didn’t have to stumble into the bar alone, and Martin was always damn good at scouting out places with good drinks and even better people.

(“Oh, you’re making me blush,” Martin said.

Tim grinned, “What, like it’s hard?”)

So Tim, for the first time in a long while, got smashed. Like,  _ really  _ smashed, and not in the way he got smashed alone and had to stumble to bed without doing anything because the only thing he could bring himself to do was be a sad sack, and ended up waking up gross and with a headache and feeling sorry for himself. He got drunk the Kesha way, which was, unarguably, the  _ best  _ way to get drunk. Actually Tim still probably had glitter somewhere on his person from that night-

But those were just minor details! He drank, he made merry, he flirted with both some pretty guys and gals and everything between, and started stumbling back home, partially on Martin’s arm and partially leaning on a broken cane he’d found somewhere. 

It was a slow, shuffling sort of walk, laden with more than a few false starts and shambling. Tim was so out of it that he felt like he was tripping every other step over thin air, while still finding ways to gingerly step over any actual obstacles. Martin, the less drunk of them, walked him to the tube, since they lived so far apart, and Tim was grateful to have the splintered cane half to lean on.

Still wasn’t sure where that came from, actually, or where it went. Or if he still had it? Either way. 

Turns out a broken cane wasn’t the only thing Tim ended up finding.

(“Tim. I was there for that- I, know about your drunk hoarding habits.”

“Shh! I’m setting the mood.”

“By talking about all the intact leaflets of lottery tickets? Or what about that- that chain-link bikini-”

“Hey, hey- listen, that’s- that’s different from this- this is a  _ spooky thing- _ ” Martin just about choked on air with laughter as Tim took a bewildered second to realize he’d just told a joke.)

The rain was falling even harder by the time Tim had stumbled in front of his building. By this point, it was pointless to have his umbrella open- he was having a hard time keeping a hold on it and the bikini (“Hah!” Tim sighed dramatically at Martin’s outburst with a sharp,  _ “Martin-” _ ), and the wind was so powerful that the sheets of water cascading from the sky whipped into Tim’s clothes and face, soaking him through the bone. 

He shuddered violently against the cold, blinking heavily against the lights of the apartment and the rainwater falling into his eyes. Still, he wasn’t about to let some shitty weather get him down! Tim had  _ needed  _ that night, and dammit, he felt good for once. It felt good, not to be alone, and not to feel like people were wrong and off and paranoid and questioning him for no good reason, or have to worry about whatever weird shit was going to come around the corner. (Tim didn’t tell Martin that bit. He just told him about the cold and rain.)

Dropping the metal bikini into the void, never to be seen again, Tim’s hand scrambled clumsily into his pocket, trying to find where the hell he’d stuck his key. His fingers were closing around the metal triumphantly when, from somewhere in the darkness, there was a low groan.

Tim froze as suddenly as the sound had come, going as still as he possibly could. For a full minute, he stood underneath the pouring sky, cold licking against the edges of his frigid fingers as the lights in front of him seemed to flicker under the weight of the storm. Tim didn’t even realize he was holding his breath until he felt the burn flowing from his lungs, up and out. He only took in a breath when an arc of lightning shone overhead, illuminating a vague shape sprawled out on the sidewalk. 

Tim exhaled all at once, eyes fixed on the black shape on the ground. The thunder followed directly after, causing his eardrums to tremble under the boom as he slowly, hesitantly, took a step forward to have a look.

Look. Tim had seen enough horror movies to know when something wasn’t a good idea. In fact, he had  _ lived  _ in one of those horror movies and had been the dumbass self-sacrificial macho man to boot. He knew this was a terrible idea and was probably going to like, get him on a demon’s shitlist. If he wasn’t already on some worm god’s shitlist, at least. The point was, the less supernatural shitlists he was on, the better. 

But the shape groaned again, perfectly human and sounding sopping wet. Tim approached, trying to be silent despite the fact that he could barely coordinate his limbs to move, much less move straight. One step at a time, the shape came into view. What had seemed like shadowy lengths of metal were clearly a set of long limbs- not inhumanly long, just long, human limbs. With had seemed like flattened tendrils became a long, soaked overcoat. What had seemed like a blob slowly took the shape of a head and mop of wet, wavy looking hair. 

There was someone lying face down on the concrete outside his apartment. For a second, Tim wasn’t sure if they were breathing. For a longer second, Tim wasn’t sure he wanted to check.

It wasn’t just because he was afraid of the possibility of another statement-worthy monster showing up to him. He’d dealt with his fair share of that. But, if this body was human, and if it wasn’t breathing… somehow, the idea of finding a dead body there, outside his apartment building, was more terrifying than any worm hell could be.

(“... Sorry, Martin. You… I forgot, you-”

“No, no- it’s… it’s fine. Keep going; this is your time.”)

Tim didn’t want to just leave someone there, though. Steeling himself, he dropped the umbrella and whatever else he was holding, and crouched down over the body. With careful hands, he turned the form onto his back. He breathed a little easier when he saw the stranger was definitely breathing.

He was breathing, and there was nothing wrong with his body or face either. It looked as if he’d just passed out. There was a normal, human man; he was normal, human passed out on the sidewalk. Tim sure as hell wasn’t about to leave him there, either- that’d be a shit thing, and who knew what led him to be passed out here?

He was pretty proud of how he didn’t slur that much when he said, “Hey… Come on, can you hear me?” Tim gingerly shook the stranger’s shoulders, looking over his body to see if he was hurt anywhere. The man seemed totally fine- thankfully, it was easy to see if anything was amiss, since the only thing he wore was a thin black sleeveless shirt that clung to his toned chest and even tighter, black skinny jeans, undamaged in any way. His bare arms were unmarked except for some scars, crossing his left arm from the shoulder down, as if from claws, and the only thing marring his face was dark red lipstick (how wasn’t it running? What brand was it-) and mascara, running down one cheek.

After a slightly more pronounced jostling, the stranger’s eyelashes fluttered, visible eye slowly opening. Belatedly, Tim realized that he threw his umbrella somewhere, and he didn’t want to move away and try to look for it and get this guy’s eyes stung by water. He stood partially, trying to ineffectually shield the stranger from the rain with his body. The stranger made no move to sit up; one eye was covered by deep, auburn hair plastered to his skin, and the other was staring up at Tim in a daze.

Shit- Tim hoped this wasn’t like, a concussion or anything. He was  _ so  _ drunk. Way too drunk for A&E paperwork. Did he need to do paperwork? It wasn’t like he knew this guy- not the point. He needed to make sure this guy didn’t need to be hospitalized. “Y-You’re awake,” Tim said, relieved. The glassy look in the man’s eye wasn’t helping his nerves any, but he was at least not normal, human passed out anymore! Best to be glad of the little things.

The man slowly blinked, once, then twice, and then Tim was taken aback by how intently he was being looked at. That singular whiskey-brown eye gazed at Tim as if trying to drink in his features, so serious and single minded that it was hard to look away. If Tim looked too close, he would have probably just gotten drunk all over again, drowning in the color.

A pale hand slowly reached up, brushing Tim’s cheek. The stranger spoke. Said, so tenderly awestruck as he looked into Tim’s eyes, “... angel…”

Then he promptly rolled onto his knees and threw up.

Tim stood for a moment, watching the stranger hack up the contents of his stomach, heaving and gagging with plenty of gross noises, and thought to himself,  _ This is the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. _

Tim barely even noticed when some of the bile was washed toward his shoes. He was just focused on crouching down beside the stranger and rubbing circles into his back- after all, what else could he do? It wasn’t like he could pull the sick out of him or anything. Better to just help him ride it all out. 

The stranger shivered, both from cold and the disgusting aftermath of vomiting. After a long moment, he finally whispered, as if making a major discovery, “I’m… drunk.” Tim clicked his tongue in sympathy and just kept rubbing circles into the man’s lower back, glowing with some pride as the drunken stranger leaned into the touch. 

“Yeah,” Tim said, as if that added anything to the conversation.

The stranger slowly sat up, resting his bare hands palm up on his knees and looking down at them uncomprehendingly, as if searching for something in them. Now that Tim was looking a bit closer, he started realizing that the man’s shoulders weren’t the only thing with scars- ringing around his neck were a collection of faint marks, almost like cycles of pinpricks ringing around his neck in every size and tightness imaginable. It made his heart hurt, for some reason, which was probably just sympathy now that he thought about it. Whatever had given him those marks must not have been fun.

“-um.” The stranger uttered, voice so quiet that Tim could barely hear him over the patter of rain. “What are you… doing?”

“Making sure you’re alright,” Tim said, patting his unscarred shoulder. Was his skin soft because he moisturized or because he was wet, and did Tim only notice because he was drunk off his ass? Place your bets now. “You- you kind of… were on the ground, you know, mister...”

“... mister…” The man parroted back, confused. Tim waited for a few seconds before nudging him, trying to see if he was going to catch his drift here. He did, eventually slurring out, “Oh- Joe. Joseph. Joseph’s me- my name,”

“Mannn, Joey,” Tim said, awed, “You really are drunk.”

“Good to hear from you... pot,” Joseph murmured, the corners of his mouth tilting down in probably the most adorable frown Tim had ever seen on a face. It didn’t help that Tim had absolutely no fucking clue where he’d gotten ‘pot’ from.

“Tim, actually,” Tim introduced himself, “Timothy Stoker- d- d’you have… a flat? A house. Where do you live?” He stood up, holding a hand out to Joseph. Joseph stared at it for a moment before taking it with a touch so light Tim wasn’t entirely sure it was even there, pulling himself up to his full height and  _ hello.  _ This guy? Was tall. And that was saying something, when Tim was basically six foot already. (He was 5’11, but that was Basically Six Feet Tall, shut up.)

Joseph angled his face downward, bashful, as he swayed heavily on his feet. “Yeah… this is my… building.” He glanced over at the Tim’s apartment building, squinting against the light. “... Yeah, definitely.”

“You sure you’re just drunk?” Tim asked, because damn, this was a whole new level of bladdered. 

“Yep,” Joseph murmured, stepping closer to Tim and shivering mightily. Jesus, his skin was so cold that it felt like a solid block of ice was pressing against Tim- just how long had this guy been out here? Joseph’s head knocked against Tim’s, slightly painfully actually. “Hey… take me home?”

“Planning on it,” Tim tried to wiggle his eyebrows because damn, who  _ wouldn’t  _ wanna take this fine specimen home? He failed though, mostly because he could no longer really feel his face. Or remember how to move his eyebrows. “Which one’s yours?” 

“Uh…” Joseph took a long, silent moment, allowing himself to be gently led up the front steps to the building. Getting inside the warm entrance and out from the cold was a fucking blessing, and Tim just about cried with how warm he was suddenly. “Fifth… no, ah… si… seventh?” Joseph actually looked close to tears. “… why’re there so many floors…”

Tim wrapped an arm around the poor bloke’s shoulders to keep him steady, taking a step forward and immediately sliding along the floor. Shit- stupid, fucking tiles, hindering any kind of movement. Joseph held onto Tim’s waist, trying his best to hold him up even though he was starting to slide a little too. The weight was warm, comforting… Not the time to focus on that, Tim told himself. He was in charge of getting two drunken idiots up to his flat. One such drunken idiot being, namely, himself.

“You can stay the night? ‘Til you remember,” Tim offered, focusing on raising one foot up and gingerly setting it back down a step in front of him. Slow and steady and something something, proverbs. “I’m on four.”

Joseph nodded, wet fringe flopping along with the motion. The journey to the elevator was slow and steady, with both stumbling over each other as Joseph muttered, with utter devastation, “I memorized it an’ everythin’...” Tim could only pat him with empathy.

They weren’t really leaving wet trails by the time they made it to the flat, and by that point, Tim’s memory started to get foggy. He remembered getting into the apartment, and remembered comforting Joe because he was really torn up about not remembering where he lived, and remembered thinking about his shitty ex-boyfriend Marcus for some reason; but after that, he must have passed out on the couch, because that was where he ended up waking up.

Tim woke up the next morning with his brain trying to break out of his fucking skull (which was terrible) and the smell of something fruity from the kitchen (decidedly less terrible). 

For a long moment, Tim didn’t open his eyes, just bemoaning the fact that life hated him in particular and no one else in the history of ever. His head throbbed in time with an invisible EDM version of the macarena and his stomach roiled something fierce. One too many of the absinthe cocktails, then. His neck ached, probably from where it was awkwardly craning on the arm of his couch. Honestly he wasn’t sure why he kept this thing around- the springs were sharp and there wasn’t a cushion on the right arm…

Usually. Usually, there wasn’t. But today, there was something soft under his head.

Eyes slowly blinking open (and breath hissing out from between clenched teeth because the curtains were open and there was  _ too much  _ light for a god damn morning), he saw that someone had placed one of the pillows from his bed under his head. AS Tim was slowly reorienting himself to the world of the living, he also realized that he was a lot warmer than he usually was under the thin blanket he kept on the couch.

Slowly sitting up, the quilt from his bed and the couch blanket fell off his shoulders. Someone must have… but wait, who was in his apartment, again?

Getting up sucked and the carpet was oddly cold under his heels, but it was a small price to pay for wandering into the kitchen and figuring out what the source of that absolutely  _ delicious  _ smell was. Turning from the shitty light of day, Tim waddled his way toward the kitchen, holding his quilt tight around his shoulders like a shroud. 

It was actually kind of surprising to see Joseph-from-last-night still there. Flipping pancakes while wearing an oversized t-shirt and boxers, no less, dark hair having curled up into thick, nearly corkscrew curls that fell into his eyes. 

Ah. That was one of the t-shirts Tim had stolen from Marcus to be petty. That explained why he’d apparently been thinking about him the night before.

Tim almost said something- probably something witty (as he was wont to be) or endearing (which was a given whenever he spoke)- but he paused. There was a calm quiet that settled over the flat, somehow unbroken and unharmed despite the faint sizzle of the pans providing white noise. 

From Tim’s angle, leaning against the doorframe so that his body wouldn’t scream at him too much, he was able to catch a side view of his guest, long eyelashes tilted downward as he intently went about his work. His mouth was set in a perpetually neutral line, but it didn’t seem as if he was angry or upset about anything. Joseph looked contemplative, carefully maneuvering his hands with perhaps more care than was actually necessary for something as mundane as breakfast. The curling and uncurling of his fingers around the spatula was oddly fluid, as if he’d been practicing the motion to make it seem as quietly theatrical as possible.

Without looking up, Joseph broke the silence, voice smooth. “I don’t know where your aspirin is. I can look for it after I finish the sauce, if you want to lay down?”

Well, shit. Tim’d totally forgotten that both of them were fully functional adults and were totally capable of speech. He blinked, managing a smile, “Nah, I’m already up- may as well stick around and make sure you don’t burn the place down,”

Joseph flipped another pancake, the corner of his mouth ticking up in what wasn’t quite a smile. “If it makes you feel any better, I only plan on doing that for dinner.” 

Tim snorted, gliding his way into the room with the comforter still wrapped around his shoulders like a cape. He glanced at the other pot on the stove, finding it full of sweet-smelling strawberry sauce. Even if his stomach hurt like hell, he was already close to drooling. God, when was the last time he’d had a home-cooked meal? When was the last time he’d had time to  _ cook?  _ “Hey, if dinner would smell as amazing as this, I’ll take you up on that offer- come what arson may.”

“Dangerous talk,” Joseph commented.

“Hey, what can I say? I’m a daredevil,” Tim said, flitting past to see if he could find some seltzer or something. Tea, too. … Or coffee. Whichever kind of person Joseph was. 

“Never said I didn’t like it…” Joseph murmured, glancing at Tim as he brushed a swath of unruly curls behind his ear, trying to get a clearer look. Tim was struck by how vividly brown that eye was- even set into such a serious face, eyelids perpetually drooping. So Joseph had sleepy-looking eyes- it was something that Tim wished he remembered as he woke up because they were cute and caught him off guard.

After a moment, with his hand still partially curled around his ear, Joseph said, “... Sorry for cooking, by the way. I kind of inserted myself…”

“It’s fine- it’s so much  _ better  _ than fine, actually,” Tim smiled back. “Free food’s always a bonus! Even if you didn’t have to cook…”

“I know. I wanted to.” Joseph said simply, face tucking away bashfully. “I took your bed last night, so it’s only fair, really.”

“It’s appreciated! I can’t thank you enough,” Tim beamed, heart fluttering in his chest because damn. Dammit. One person couldn’t be this sweet, right? That wasn’t a paranoid thought, that was a thought where Tim just took a second to bless his good fortune, because after the last few months he’d had, having something like this happen was… really nice, actually. “I’ll have to return the favor, when you remember where you live,”

Joseph turned back to the strawberry sauce, turning off the burner with his free hand as the tips of his ears went a very attractive shade of red, where they poked through his mess of bedhead. “Well, I did end up remembering- I’m actually on the floor below you, believe it or not.”

Tim gasped, pleasantly surprised. “Right below me? So you’re the new neighbor that just moved in-?” God, that was music to his goddamn ears. Picking up an attractive stranger who was pretty and sweet and lived directly  _ below  _ his flat, replacing the former third-floor resident who hated his guts? What were the odds?

“Mhm,” Joseph hummed, peeking back at him with a tight-lipped, secret little smile. “Plates?”

Tim, having forgotten all about his headache (which was still there and hurt like a bitch, but dammit, he was also bi as fuck and was being offered  _ pancakes),  _ reached up the cabinet and grabbed a couple. “Right here- I have to say, Joe, I’m honestly surprised! Where’ve you been hiding all this time?” 

“Underground,” Joseph said immediately, and though he didn’t quite sound like he was joking, there was a lightness to his tone that meant he must have been, “here and there, you know… I’m still moving in, so I’m not used to the place yet.”

Tim stood sentry with the two plates, holding onto them as Joseph loaded gorgeous stacks of fluffy brown pancakes onto each. “It’s pretty quiet around here- not much getting used to, really,” Other than bosses stalking you, Tim thought bitterly, though honestly that was just a Jon problem.

For a moment, Tim wondered what would happen if Jon ended up latching onto Joseph as a potential suspect, and stamped the thought down violently. Nope. No. He was  _ not  _ doing this. He was not about to start getting weird and paranoid and possibly shooting himself in the foot just because fucking  _ Jon  _ didn’t know how to act like a human being. Besides, it wasn’t as if Joseph was in any way affiliated with the supernatural- hopefully, but Tim was getting the feeling that he wasn’t, considering how  _ normal  _ he seemed- so there was no reason for Jon to get weird about it.

Tim wasn’t going to let his shitty supernatural job ruin this for him. Whatever ‘this’ might evolve into.

(Tim would later omit his internal monologue in his telling of this meetcute to Martin. But it would still nag, in the back of his mind.)

“-im?” Tim snapped back to attention when he heard Joseph speak, blinking owlishly. His head still hurt. But Joseph’s hand was hovering just over the side of Tim’s face as if wanting to brush back his mess of a bedhead. His voice had been soft before, but now it seemed even softer, impossibly gentle as he asked, “Are you doing alright?”

Tim didn’t answer for a moment, acutely aware that he’d just spaced out in the middle of his kitchen while holding two plates of pancakes and bundled up in his blanket like an idiot in front of a very attractive man. He let out a breath and smiled, shrugging. “Yeah- sorry, the hangover’s been a real bitch this time around. Guess that’s just my luck, huh?”

Joseph took a step back, looking relieved. Or maybe content. It was actually kind of hard to read the guy, which, while it normally would have been unsettling, kind of put Tim at ease. It was good that at least someone here knew what to do in this conversation. “Alright- where was your medicine cabinet?”

“Bathroom- but I got a bottle in the cabinet over the fridge.” Tim had taken to keeping one there after Prentiss. He had a lot more headaches and hangovers, as of late.

Joseph nodded, moving over to the fridge. Tim’s smile dropped into something more genuine as he balanced the plates on one arm and grabbed the handle of the strawberry pot with the other, making his way over to his way-too-small kitchen table. He’d always meant to get a bigger one, but well, he certainly didn’t get paid  _ nearly  _ enough for the job he was doing. 

Tim was in the middle of pouring strawberries when he remembered- oh right. Shit. His water. Thankfully, it seemed that Joseph was bringing it over, along with the pills. God bless this man and god bless this morning. 

Tim was about to say as much out loud when he actually took a bite of the strawberry sauce pancakes. Then, all thought processes had to pause because they were, undoubtedly, some of the best he’d had in… in fucking  _ ever?  _ The perfect blend of sweetness and tartness, faintly citrusy- like Joseph had added some lemon to offset it from becoming overly sweet. Had Tim even had lemons in the fridge? For a second, all he could do was marvel at the taste and marvel at wherever that miracle lemon had come from.

Joseph, having sat down, fiddled with his own fork as he glanced up at Tim through his eyelashes. “... Good?”

“Good,” Tim said, glancing down at his food and kind of feeling as if he was looking at the face of God. Didn’t matter which one. “Holy shit, Joseph- good doesn’t even begin to describe it? It’s,” He laughed, feeling his head start to clear even though he hadn’t actually taken the meds yet, “it’s god damn  _ amazing?  _ This is hands down- no, hands up and hands all in on finishing this- the  _ best  _ breakfast I’ve had,” 

Joseph looked at him for a moment, taken aback by the words. Then, in a move that took Tim’s breath away in one fell swoop, he beamed.

“-Tim? Tim. Timothy.” Tim came back to the present, blinking at one Martin Blackwood, who looked close to laughter. Little bastard was definitely laughing at him- Tim could see it all underneath that huggable shape and friendly face. Martin was a sweetheart, but he was also a devil, and Tim would not be fooled. “You alright there, mate?”

“Uh, yeah? Yeah man, totally,” Tim said, and he was still smiling. His cheeks were hurting- that was the telltale sign that he hadn’t stopped, even if he hadn’t paid attention to the last couple of minutes in the slightest, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, you’ve just been nodding your head for the last minute,” Martin said, amused, “Haven’t said a single word, really. I was just about worried that you’d gone senile on me.”

“Christ Martin, what do you take me for?” Tim rolled his eyes to high heaven, but honestly, he was in too good of spirits to really be annoyed. “Nope, not going senile- I’m still as young and  _ virile  _ as ever,” He winked. 

“God, I wish I didn’t know you well enough to know you would say that,” Martin chuckled, nudging Tim’s shoulder. “Come on now- What were you thinking about?”

“Oh you know, just,” Tim couldn’t help it, feeling himself go pink even as he kept speaking, “his smile? Mostly his smile. God, you should see it-it doesn’t look like he emotes much, but when he smiles he really  _ smiles,” _

Martin whistled. “You’re really caught up with him,”

“I mean, how can I  _ not  _ be?” Tim asked, genuine. He was only human- there were some things he just  _ couldn’t  _ resist. 

“Well, what else? You did get his number, right?” Martin pressed.

“Course I did! Who do you think I am?” Tim laughed. “We exchanged numbers and he told me his last name, and I didn’t believe him at first but he showed me an ID- and then we just, you know. Talked over breakfast. Talked about what we did, what we do for fun, all that stuff.” Tim paused. “I mean- I didn’t tell him about the worm stuff. Or the real supernatural shit. Obviously.”

“Obviously…” Martin said. A slightly troubled look crossed his face, and he was about to say something when Tim’s phone buzzed. They looked at the glittery monstrosity that was Tim’s phone case (chosen specifically because it was the ugliest thing Tim had ever seen) in silence.

Both men paused as Tim turned his phone over, looking at the notification. One text, from the lovely Joe Spooky himself, lit across the screen.

“... He’s invited me out for coffee.”

Martin broke out in a wide smile, eyes crinkling at the corners and apparent worry forgotten as he started another round of congratulations. Tim would ask about that- later. Not now. Now was time for being happy about coffee dates and not thinking about- repercussions, or weird shit, or anything going wrong. 

Out of habit, Tim glanced around the room to make sure Sims wasn’t doing that damn silent shuffle, but he was nowhere to be seen. Thank Christ.

Breaking out into a wide grin, Tim threw an arm around Martin’s shoulder and poked him in the chest playfully, “Now you know, I got a closet  _ full  _ of date-worthy outfits, but I might need a second opinion here…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thus ends the kind of prologue for the rest of the fic! Meaning that soon.... plot time. I'm winging a lot but I have a pretty good idea of where to go, and I've been listening to two songs over and over that have the vibe that the rest of the fic might take ? Not exact events, but [My Crush Was A Monster Boy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPQOFz9pUgI) and [I Forgot You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcaFXR0fYgM) by mambo-dead-behind-the-house-p have the kinds of tones I'm thinking of, especially the end of I Forgot You... Also the last verses of Wait For Me II from Hadestowm now that I think about it but like, I'm already doing something hadestown inspired for some anime shit so we'll see
> 
> Anyway. I hope you enjoy, and thanks to everyone who's commented thus far!! I should be able to reply to comments here as soon as I'm done with midterms jkvfnkv


	4. Candy Addict

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Statement of Emily Hawthorne, in regards to her experience with a vampire, a vampire-eating monster, and her recent craving for blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "come back in two weeks" I said, like a fool, forgetting that I was itching to do horror and that TMA is a Horror Thing...
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the lighthearted prologue! Because now I have a pipe, and I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty. Now I PROMISE i got the most of it out of my system, so I'm not gonna feel the frenzied need to write for a while. so maybe I'll be able to pick this back up after midterms hbfvkjhf instead of just stress writing. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> TW For This Chapter's Statement: mild body horror, graphic depictions of head trauma, blood, implied cannibalism, minor self harm in one instance

As it turned out, Jon didn’t have much time to worry about the Tim situation in the following days, due to a small breakthrough in the case of Gertrude. It wasn’t large, by any means, but the fact that now he knew Gertrude’s flat was just sitting there, untouched, ripe for a little investigation- it itched at the back of his mind, at the back of his neck, a metaphysical catscratch he couldn’t reach with his all-too physical fingers alone.

Halloween was in two weeks. He could probably plan something for… sometime close to it, if he were smart. The closer it was to Halloween, the more easily the police could chalk up the breaking and entering of an abandoned flat being paid for despite there being no owner to some delinquent or another looking for a season-appropriate dose of… loathe as Jon was to say… ‘spooky’.

Jon didn’t remember where he learned there were rumors being passed around Gertrude’s apartment building about her abandoned flat, still in its “haunted” state, but he must have learned it somewhere. He just had a feeling he knew it.

The thought made him shudder. It was better left unexamined, in all honesty- at least, for now, while there were so many other things to contend with.

He was looking over a calendar when the door to his office was violently thrown open.

Sighing, Jon started to turn toward the intruder, shoulders squared back. “Do you mind? Some of us are trying to  _ work,  _ you kn…” 

Then, he realized that the figure in the door wasn’t anyone he recognized. Sounding down the hallway were the quick sounds of footsteps and Martin shouting, “Wait! Wait just a moment-! You- you can’t just-”

The woman in the doorway heaved out heavy, panting breaths, holding onto the door frame so tightly that her knuckles were going from tan to nearly white. In the bright light spilling through the doorway at her back, her front seemed sprawled in shadow, irises seemingly nonexistent in the pitch black of her pupils blown wide. There were bags under her eyes. Scratch marks on her arms. Frame sickly and skinny, not quite getting to the point of emaciation, but getting there, slowly and certainly. 

When she spoke, her voice trembled with the rasp of disuse and shudder of fear. “You’re- you’re the Head Archivist. Yeah? You’ll- you’ll listen. You have to listen,” Her grip tightened evermore, bitten nails digging painfully into the wood. “I have… I have a statement.”

Jon slowly set the calendar aside as Martin popped into the doorway behind the frantic woman, hands hovering nervously as he glanced between the woman’s back and Jon standing behind his desk, “Ma’am,” Martin’s voice was gentle and warm, tinged with heavy concern, “I’m- I’m really sorry, but you can’t just- just…. Rush down here, like that. Could- let’s go on up and I can make you some tea, yeah? We can get some things arranged for a meeting, and then we’ll come right on back-”

“No need,” Jon said, eyeing the woman. It was obvious that whatever was troubling her, it was having an immediate effect- and besides that, the fact that Martin wanted to whisk her away to talk about who knew what before it got to Jon was… suspect. “I’ll take the young lady’s statement now, if that’s all the same to you. It seems as though we’ll need to hear it.”

(Jon would tuck that fact away to look at later, to analyze why Martin may want to screen statements before they made their way to him. What sort of information was Martin telling them to omit, if anything? What was Martin  _ looking  _ for?)

(Maybe Jon would have to start just taking whoever came in outright. The thought seemed time-consuming and not at all feasible, with so much more of the archives to organize, and yet…)

Despite how suspicious he was, Martin’s answering smile over the woman’s shoulder seemed so genuinely relieved that it nearly made Jon re-examine his previous thoughts. Almost. When the young woman heard that Jon was ready for her, her grip on the door frame loosened, and Jon was glad to see that she seemed to be calming down. Then, her knees buckled, and she began to slide towards the floor.

“Ah-!” Martin gasped, reaching forward to gingerly steady the woman. “Whoa there- come on then, lean on me a moment,”

Jon, suddenly feeling out of his depth, just sat at his desk doing just about nothing. It was pretty obvious that the woman was much weaker than what she was already betraying, and she needed to sit- but it wasn’t as if Jon could do anything about that, what with her being across the room and being personally rubbish at comfort anyway. 

Martin, thankfully enough, had it handled. He gingerly led the woman to the chair across from Jon’s desk, taking her weight without any fuss. His hand lingered, large and warm, over her shoulder as he sat her down, murmuring kindly, “Miss Emily, would you like any tea? Water?” He paused, “... We may have some biscuits-”

“No- no, to the biscuits,” The woman, a miss Emily, as it turned out, said, shoulders still shivering mightily underneath the overcoat that was drowning her, “W… would you have some earl grey?”

“Of course,” Martin said, squeezing her shoulder and then drawing away. “I’ll be right back,”

Jon said, belatedly remembering, “Ah, Martin- there’s an extra blanket in the closet beside the staff room. Bring that.” It was a paltry comfort, left over from Martin’s stay in the archives and bought by either Sasha or Tim when everyone had chipped in to spruce up Martin’s temporary residence, but it was about the only thing Jon could offer. Creature comforts, barely able to gentle any such creature. 

“Right,” Martin said, leaving the room. The door to Jon’s office closed behind him with a near-silent click, leaving him with silence, shivering, and the vague buzz of the artificial lights overhead.

While Jon had read his fair share of disturbing or macabre statements and had had to speak in person with some rather fearful people, this was the first time in his months at the archives that he had met someone so visibly  _ rattled, _ bar, perhaps, Helen Richardson.  There was still a panic to the woman that was disconcerting, bleeding over her features as she crumpled in on herself in her seat, glancing around the room as if the stacks of books and papers would eat her alive.

For once, Jon wished he knew what to say. He wished he had some comforting words, or could offer something that wasn’t going to be entirely, wholly empty. But, then again, as rattled as Emily was, there was still no guarantee that her situation was one they could help. And this all could turn out to be another waste of time.

The only thing Jon could do was begin. He clicked on the tape recorder.

“Now, if you would please introduce yourself…” The quicker this happened, the better.

“R. Right.” The woman’s teeth chattered before she took a deep breath to steady herself, “My name is- is Emily Hawthorne. I’m a part-time student at St. Mary’s and am the... primary caretaker. Of my parents.” 

Jon reiterated for the record, “Statement of Emily Hawthorne, regarding…”

“Regarding…” Emily took in another shuddering breath, “the monster that took me home last week, the man that saved me, and- and....” She swallowed thickly. “... My recent craving for blood.”

“...” That last part, admittedly, caught Jon a bit by surprise. Surprise and, if he were being totally honest, caught a hint of paranoia. Rapidly running through the checklist of tells that a certain Trevor Herbet had listed for vampires, he came up with nothing out of the ordinary- he could see the glint of Emily’s blunt, human teeth when she opened her mouth, wetting her lip with a wholly normal human tongue. Even if she were truly a vampire, why come to the institute in broad daylight? It seemed like the most improbable way to catch a meal- improbable and inadvisable, considering what the Magnus Institute dealt with.

Jon continued, deciding to let the subject explain her blood craving to be judged after the fact, “Statement recorded October the 17th, 2016, and taken directly from subject.” Jon pushed the tape recorder over the desk toward Emily’s side, and she blessedly didn’t comment on the ancient piece of machinery. He just hoped that wasn’t merely because she was afraid.

“Statement begins.”

* * *

I really shouldn’t have gone out that night, you know? It was all over the news since Monday; some storm being sensationalized as the one of the century, the thing that was set to drown London out. The one storm to rule them all. It was going to be rainy and awful and  _ not at all  _ suited for bar hopping in the slightest.

I should have stayed home and made something hot for mum. I should have gone out to gather more blankets if I were to have gone out at all since da’s bones get right tetchy whenever it rains. I should have had a night in and done what I was  _ supposed  _ to do, but my brother took me by the shoulders and  _ insisted  _ I go out. “It’s always rainy in bloody fucking London anyway,” Tommy had said, turning his nose up when I tried to very sensibly tell him about the storm that was set to come. “What’s another little shower?”

I tried to protest with everything I had to stay in- I didn’t have anything to wear, and I didn’t know if my makeup was at its expiration date yet, and even if I wanted to go I didn’t have a single other person to go with- but my brother just batted them all off and helped me do my hair. I hadn’t really had a night off since my father’s hip surgery, and with so many of my friends going into full-time nursing, I haven’t had the time to reconnect with anyone. Tommy’s always been a worrywart, in his own little way- runs in the family, I’m told- so I suppose this was his way of trying to help me ‘loosen up’.

Tommy took over watching our parents for the night and all but shoved me out of the house, demanding that I make myself a new friend or, barring that, some fun mistakes to tell him about. I wasn’t really able to tell him that that really wasn’t up to me, since he’d already closed the door before I could protest. I was left outside, wearing clothes I hadn’t tried to squeeze myself into in some five odd years, under the bulbous grey sky.

What else was there to do after that? While I was still irked by my big brother’s impulsive takeover of the house, I couldn’t deny that some part of me was a little… relieved, when I walked down the street to the nearest place. It’s… a little selfish of me, I realize, and I really do feel a little bad! But... it’d been so long since I had some time to myself that, well. I figured that this was as good a time as any to take it. I would complain about it the entire way via text to my brother, but in some respects, I was looking forward to it.

The Grey Phlox was a gay bar relatively close to my house, though I still felt the walk on the way over due to my heels. It’s a cozy little hole in the wall, rare for the likes of Chelsea; it was also the only relatively inexpensive bar in the area, also rare for Chelsea. It was still a little pricey, but I wasn’t about to break the bank by ordering a few rounds for myself, so I settled in to have a little drink.

One little drink became several not so little drinks, and before long, I was starting to push into the territory of being a little tipsy. The lights on the dance floor shone in soft palettes of magenta and violet that cast the indistinct faces of the surprisingly plentiful crowd in hues of mauve, of iris and mixed berry drinks that bled together at the edges. It wasn’t helped by the slight blur of my vision or the vague tingling in the back of my brain, throbbing without pain in time with the club music and the loud banter of some guys sat at the bar beside me, hooting at some joke about stuffy bosses.

I was sat back on a bar stool, back leaning against the edge of the counter as I nursed some kind of raspberry cocktail I couldn’t tell you the name of if I tried when I saw her. She was bobbing and weaving through the bodies on the dancefloor, so fluid that I wasn’t sure if I was looking at a real person or a dream. That dreamlike quality only grew when we locked eyes; hers lit pale red by the purple lights skimming across her skin, intent, framed by black curls cut with lavender. She smiled at me then, and a shudder ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the alcohol.

I had another drink. I was through half of a second- for that round; the real number must have been closer to five or six- when she finally sidled up beside me, dark red painted lips still curled in that coy little smile. It’s… odd to realize, now, after the fact. I never saw her open her mouth once during the ensuing conversation. I don’t know why I didn’t notice at the time as she was flirting, speaking sly and getting me a little bothered under the collar of my sleeveless dress- it should have been obvious that her voice was coming from somewhere other than her mouth. 

I suppose I was too buzzed at the time to realize. Whatever the case, by the time I did realize, it was far too late. 

She introduced herself as Rose Thornback and we bantered a bit about the last names- a Hawthorne and a Thornback, what were the odds- and she slid her fingers into mine. They were cool to the touch, with the pinpricks of her nails- nails too sharp, too refined to a black painted point to be human- digging into the palm of my hand.

She asked me to come home with her. I said yes.

I stumbled through the streets along after her, hair sticking to my back and shoulders with the rain that poured over us, but I didn’t care. I thought I was being propositioned by a pretty girl looking to have a good time; it didn’t cross my mind to ask her about the nails. I guess I just assumed they were fake in some way- acrylic. Easily removed, when things really got going.

As I was tugged along through increasingly narrower alleyways, the dingy brick on either side of my periphery blurring into smears of greyscale around me, I realized that more and more of my partner for the night seemed fake.

Her nails seemed fake, but not plastic, like what would have been expected- they felt like sanded down talons, set into her nails on human-like nail beds that were just a little too white around the edges. Her eyes were unnaturally bright, but not in the way of Halloween contacts or eyes lit by the passing streetlamps should have been bright; they were bright in the way of something almost but not quite human, with some kind of extra layer behind them, reflecting and refracting with muscular movements that bulged just the slightest bit under the surface of her cornea.

There came a moment when I realized we’d stepped out of the rain. It was storming as badly as anything outside, thundering so loudly that I thought my brain was rattling in my ears. What had been a fun buzz was giving was to peals of nausea that made the room spin. I told Rose I wanted to sit down. Just for a moment. Before we did anything, I just needed the slightest moment.

She let me step back and lean against the cracked concrete wall, catching my breath. I only realized, after a moment of my eyes roving the room, that I didn’t know where I was. Wherever it was, it was run down; it was abandoned in a way that could only be described as “forsaken”, walls stained with faded graffiti that marked it as a room that not even fledgling artists wanted to spread their craft in. Streaks of off white and blue decorated the rubble of a partially caved in wall, letting in streams of rattling water that made a constellation of lakes in the far corner. It was much cleaner than what would have been expected; clean in the way that suggested it was lived in. That it was familiar to someone, despite the lack of a bed or table.

In the middle of the room stood Rose, watching me. Her eyes, hazel and staring, pierced through me like two stakes to the brain. There was no smile on her face anymore. 

There was only a mouth full of teeth.

I couldn’t help it. I froze up, muscles locking in place as quickly as stone. What else was I supposed to do? Scream, when my throat felt so dry when there was no one around to hear me? Run, when I was unsteady on heels and from drink? Fight back, when she was so much stronger than me and when the room was so bare that my only option for a makeshift weapon were the stilettos that were rapidly proven to be useless against a larger form that threw itself on top of my body?

I wasn’t thinking of those things at the moment. I wasn’t thinking at all. There was nothing inside of me but a cold fear; the fear of an animal, locked in a trap it knows it can’t escape, with no other instinct than to freeze on the off chance that the monster would take it for an unappetizing, already-dead meal. I opened my mouth when it knocked me against the hard wall, head crashing into the concrete so hard that I was seeing stars, but I don’t know what I was trying to do. I almost managed to finally move my arms, kick my legs out and jumpstart myself into action however delayed, as her mouth stretched into a cruel circle, sharp triangles of teeth brushing against my skin.

Then, ll at once, the- the monster, the creature that was going to end my life and bleed it out until nothing remained- was yanked backward. I pressed myself against the wall, eyes bulging partially out of my skull as an inhumanly tall figure snatched my attacker back by the hair. 

It was too dark in that room to see its face, but the second figure  _ looked  _ human. Dressed in all black, with pants rolled up to his knees and a mane of dark curls that swayed in the still air. Its fingers were tipped in sharpened claws, claws that looked surprisingly human as if the man had just let his nails grow out too long and manually filed them into shape. I didn’t see his eyes as his face turned downward, gazing at the monster that was thrashing wildly in his hold. 

His voice was soft. It was soft and sounded painfully human, coming from a mouth that opened normally as he told the creature, rather conversationally, “That’s enough of that, then.” With the hand not pulling on its dark hair, he reached a claw up and gingerly nicked his own neck, cutting into the flesh in a barely perceptible motion that looked less like a cut and more as though he merely parted two millimeters of skin.

The man began to bleed, but his blood… his blood wasn’t normal. I was all the way across the room at this point and there was no way I should have been able to smell anything, particularly not with the storm dulling everything; but I smelled it all the same. There was the pungent iron of human blood somewhere in there, repulsive, but the smell that filled the room was overwhelmingly sweet. 

I was reminded, in a strange moment of lucidity, of the fairs my mother had taken us to as a child- the candy apples in their displays had the same scent, artificially sweet and choking the natural, fruity scent of the fruit the coating covered. When lightning arced across the sky in the corner of the room where the wall had fallen, I found that his blood, rather than being dark, was just as bright a red. It looked as if there were beads of cherry syrup slowly trickling from the cut, contrasting heavily with the pale skin of his throat.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed the scent, it seemed. The creature that had just attempted to end my life suddenly stopped in its thrashing, narrowed eyes locked intensely on the figure’s throat. The man waited patiently and slowly began to lower himself to the floor. He was kneeling. He tipped his chin back and bared his pale neck. Folding his hands behind his back, he merely said, “My life for hers. Drink.” 

My attacker hesitated, for just a moment. It stared at the slowly beading blood trickling from his neck, smelling so bloody and sweet that it overpowered the air in the room itself as if the scent was replacing anything breathable. If the creature even needed to breathe. Then, the monster threw itself at his neck and sunk its teeth in, filling the room with even brighter bursts of candy red sweetness. I’ll never forget that sound- the slow, suckling sound of a tongue, lapping over flesh as its teeth remained greedily embedded into him.

I should have gone. I should have started to run- wanted to start running, to get away from the nauseating sight of what I was sure would be the last moments of this strange, tall man’s life, but I was transfixed. The sight of that blood was… beautiful. In the relative darkness, it didn’t look nearly so red, but I could still imagine it, the beckoning hue that colored his skin like a canvas. It was as beautiful as it smelled delicious, and I was rooted in place the moment when the monster attempted to rip the stranger’s throat out.

I say ‘attempt’, because, bizarrely, its teeth caught in his skin. The creature gave a low hiss in its throat as it attempted to pull away, attempted to jerk its head back in the motion that would end the man’s life, but its teeth never left his skin. It was as if the pale flesh gripped each individual tooth like a vice. The man’s arms, which until that point that been unresisting at his sides, suddenly wrapped around the creature’s body, restricting its arms before it could start flailing. One hand snaked into its hair, threading through it as he held her head forcefully against his neck in a twisted imitation of a lover’s embrace.

It was only then when I realized he was speaking. It was still in that terribly soft voice of his, tone almost tender but lacking the warmth to be genuine, face set in stone despite the empty words he uttered. “Good?” He asked it. He- he had this creature, restrained in his grip and slowly suckling at the point where his jugular could be easily torn apart, and he still asked it, “Good?”, as though he were offering a free sample at the market.

“Drink as much as you like,” was what he said in a voice that was suited for affection that refused to come. “I have plenty for you.” It felt… perverse, in a way that I couldn’t even fully acknowledge because, despite everything, I could feel myself begin to salivate. 

At first, I couldn’t move because I was terrified, afraid that whatever trap the man had so painstakingly laid would be undone at any moment and my attacker would have two victims instead of one; that wasn’t the case, after a long moment. It became the case that I couldn’t move because I was caught by that bright-sweet smell of candy, begging me to latch my mouth to his neck and lap it up. I wanted to drink this man’s blood for however much and however long he would allow me to, to taste that sweetness for myself. I wanted him to cut himself up for me. I wanted to eat.

The creature’s lapping slowed. Slowly, the man removed his arms and allowed the monster to slide down and away from him, languidly twitching on the floor from the blood. That candied blood and honeyed voice dripped throughout the room, suffusing my body with warm tingles that skittered across my skin like the legs of spiders if spider’s legs didn’t have the power to send me into a panic. He murmured to himself, “Guess you’re too damp for the usual…” He gripped the monster again by the hair.

He violently smashed its head against the concrete. The suddenness of it broke me from my trance. One moment, he was gingerly holding its head up, examining its delirious eyes and undulating mouth, and the next, the sickening  _ crack  _ of splintering bone echoed throughout the room. 

It would have been one thing if he only did it the once, or even stopped after the second or third times- but he just kept  _ smashing,  _ kept slamming its skull against the grey ground until the creaking of bone was masked by the meaty squelch of bloodless brain matter staining the floor. His expression was set there, in that apathetic line, as his rhythmic pounding continued long until the creature’s skull had been crushed to minute nothingness. 

It was when he brought the brain-splattered fingers of his hand to his mouth, delicately licking up the monster, that I finally found it in myself to run. I tore my gaze away and kicked my heels off, running barefoot into the night. I don’t know how long I was running out there, in the rain that never seemed to end, but I know I kept running for longer than what might have been necessary. The man who was methodically eating the monster’s brain never once looked up at me or attempted to tell me to stop. He never even followed me.

I only know that in hindsight, because even if he never followed, the smell of his blood did. I was convinced at the time that he was close behind me, somewhere, somewhere so close that even the smell of rain and ozone wasn’t able to dull that sweet scent; but as I made it back to the house, shuddering and soaking wet to the bone, the scent never left. 

Tommy found me outside, inconsolable. I was shaken, but I told him some made-up story about some creep who tried to follow me home. It was much more believable than… than a vampire and, some vampire eater. I’m still shaken- don’t think I’ll ever stop being shaken. But I could never tell him what really happened.

I couldn’t handle explaining to him the craving that follows me now, everywhere I go. An itch, just under the surface of the tissue lining my throat.

I am always thirsty now. But there is nothing that will quench it- nothing. Nothing, nothing...

* * *

For a few long moments, Jon was sure that there was more that Miss Hawthorne wanted to add. She didn’t speak further. She just swallowed thickly, hands shaking so very harshly in her lap that Jon was almost surprised that he wasn’t hearing the bones rattle.

“... Statement ends.” Jon finally said. There was no need to clarify further. She had already stated what her condition was. “And how long has this… craving, of yours, persisted?”

“A week, now.” Emily murmured faintly, eyes staring unblinkingly at the tape recorder. “It’s… it’s been a week. I’ve- I’ve spent this entire week, doing nothing except smelling- smelling  _ his  _ blood, just on the edge of everything else. It smells so sweet, I-” She took a shuddering breath. “I smell it here too.”

This was… a far more delicate case than he’d realized. Dammit, just where the hell was Martin with that tea? Jon tried to figure out where to even start with this. On the one hand, he wasn’t sure about the validity of vampires in the first place- though the one described by Miss Hawthorne did bear striking resemblance to the purported ones of Trevor Herbert- and now, a new kind of creature was being introduced. A  _ reverse  _ vampire? A living vampire poison, or something stronger than a vampire that could potentially hunt down humans as well? It all just seemed too convenient. Too far-fetched to be true.

But whatever the case, there was still Emily’s self-admitted craving for human blood. Although the story of how she got here was suspect… that, at least, would have an air of truth to it. Emily Hawthorne needed immediate help that the institute could not provide. 

In a professional tone, suddenly hyperaware of how alone he was in this office with his guest, he asked, “And… have you felt any compulsion toward… hunting for that blood?”

For a long, terrifying moment, Emily was silent. 

Jon was alone in a room with a woman who craved human blood. And she wasn’t answering with a direct ‘no’ to the question of if she would hunt people.

Slowly, Emily said, “If… others may be hiding that blood… I’ve thought that… but I-”

That was the moment that Martin stormed his cheerfulness into the room, mugs of tea in either hand and folded blanket folded over the crook of his left elbow, spilling more light into the room. Jon could have just about kissed the man, with the relief that crashed into him at that moment; he quite preferred having his blood stay inside of his person, thank you very much, and not being alone helped. 

“Sorry about the wait!” Martin said, all apologetic smiles. “Tim needed some help gathering some papers he dropped and I couldn’t find the earl grey- I did eventually!” He was quick to assure their client, setting both mugs of tea down on the desk. The blanket was draped on the arm of Emily’s chair- no pressure to take it up but offered nonetheless. “But it took me a little longer than I would have preferred, admittedly.” 

“Much longer than anyone would have preferred,” Jon said dryly, more out of habit than genuine annoyance. It was hard to be annoyed when he was getting tea, especially when it was made the way he liked. Even if Martin was suspicious, at least his tea-making skills were guaranteed to be genuine and appreciated.

There was an odd silence after that where Jon and Martin both expected Emily to speak, but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she was hyper-focused on a little dark spot, just along the edge of Martin’s palm where it was still curled around the handle of Jon’s mug.

Martin had gotten a papercut. It was bleeding, just the slightest bit, dark beads gathered along a thin line.

“Miss Emily?” Martin asked, concerned. 

Her eyes snapped to his face, pupils constricted into tiny pinpricks. She slowly said, “... Your blood…” 

“Hm?” Martin said, then started, pulling his hand away and covering the cut. “Oh…! I’m terribly sorry- are you bad with blood, Miss Emily?”

Emily looked, for just a moment, disappointed. “Ah- y. Yes. And your blood’s a little- little dull, so,” She took her cup and rapidly stood up, not even looking at the blanket. “I should go. Is there- a waiting room, or somewhere…? I-I don’t know if there’s anything else-”

“Wait a moment,” Jon said at the same time that Martin said, “Oh, certainly-!” Jon’s glare met Martin’s stare before Jon continued, “Miss Hawthorne, it would be generally recommended that you remain here for a bit. I’d like to send you to the research team with your story, to see if we can… reduce your cravings. Or if not reduce… find an adequate substitute.”

“... Right.” Emily said, slowly lowering herself back in her seat as Martin hovered a little by the desk, concerned. Jon didn’t have the heart to tell him to go. “I… I’ll defer to your judgment, then.” 

“Thank you.” Really, a terrible decision on Emily’s part, Jon thought sardonically as he picked up his phone, dialing the extension for artifact storage. The sooner her potential for violence was evaluated, the better- and the sooner they could begin to investigate.

As Jon told John-from-research to please stop being a blithering jackass for maybe five seconds and grab Pam for a serious one, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Martin looking at him. There was something soft to his gaze, something that filtered warm against Jon’s skin. Something that felt genuine.

Jon tried not to think too much about unnecessary things. There were things better suited to be dwelled upon, and the fewer complications he experienced, the better- no matter how warm the spaces between his ribs felt with Martin’s presence anchoring him to the present.


	5. Honeyed Words, Bitter Nibs / and Yet Still More Fall from Your Lips

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin doesn't take the revelation that he and Tim were in the same bar at the same time on the same day that one Emily Hawthorne was seduced into the maw of the beast well. He doesn't take it well at all.
> 
> Tim and Martin have a little heart to heart. It's cold in the archives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey everyone, it's Martin & Tim Friendship Hour ! 
> 
> also i keep slipping in hints to things i don't actually know about yet? I just got done with 73 so I'm not done with s2 yet, but I keep seeing hints about someone named Danny and the Lonely? So I'm just gonna throw my hands up and stick little things in there until I get farther in tma and can read back and be like Oh THAT'S why i had to make Tim say that. ok. gotcha. it's like a surprise for me! except the surprise is pain. Just a lot of angst and pain. anyway, I hope you enjoy!

Miss Emily Hawthorne was transferred over to the Magnus Institute research team with little trouble and with Jon pressing a bundle of resources on mental health services specializing in supernatural trauma into her frail hands. Martin hadn’t even known those services _existed,_ much less that Jon would know anything about them. Though, that all was kind of Jon’s job in this wasn’t it? Knowing these kinds of things. 

Martin handed the poor woman to Sasha, who smiled in that sad, disconcertingly unfamiliar way of hers, and gently led her away. He closed the door to Jon’s office with a click and sighed. 

She’d been so terrified, coming here… but at least, it seemed as though Miss Emily had calmed down. Tim knew the research team, and he said they were all wonderful people- though of course, Tim said this about most people he met from the other teams, what with how well he got on with seemingly everyone- and Martin was sure the woman would be in good hands.

He turned back to Jon and, almost unthinkingly, he said, “That was kind of you, Jon.” He sucked in a little breath through his teeth, because well, way to point out the obvious, Martin. But he’d started talking, so he may as well dig himself a little deeper. “Really- kind. I’m- I’m sorry for leaving you to that situation-”

“Yes, well,” Jon huffed, sinking down in his seat, “I could have used you being in the room, towards the end- but better late than never, I suppose.” There was no actual bite to his words- just deep-seated exhaustion that made Martin’s heart ache.

“Oh! Funny story, that,” Martin said, meandering over to the desk while rubbing the back of his neck. “I actually was outside- earlier than that? I caught the last five minutes of the statement, actually. I um… didn’t want to interrupt her, while she was so deep into her story. She had started talking about wanting to taste blood, and...”

Jon’s posture straightened up, locking on Martin with sudden, intense focus. It was enough to make Martin trail off, ears reddening with embarrassment as Jon went through a quick facial journey, cycling through dismay, disbelief, anger, and mild relief in turns. “So,” Jon said, far too calmly, “you left me in a room with someone five steps away from becoming a bloodsucker?”

“Not maliciously, you understand!!” Martin said, holding a hand up placatingly. “I didn’t want her having any kind of reaction if she were interrupted… and well, with the papercut-”

“You came in here fully aware of the cut?” Jon asked, sounding a little too interrogatory. The back of Martin’s neck prickled. It was just a little white lie, acting as if he hadn’t known about the cut- honest! It seemed a safer bet, playing dumb, just to test the waters…

“Well, yes? I needed to bring the tea,” Martin frowned a little. “And the last time I left you alone in a room, sounding…” Don’t say panicked don’t say panicked don’t say panicked “... jumpy,” Fuck. That sounded so much more suspicious than he meant. “you just so happened to “accidentally” stab yourself with a knife. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with you being alone with a self-reported blood addict either, you know.”

“She never actually tasted the blood- there’s a pretty large distinction,” Jon said immediately, before shaking his head, “But in any case, while it’s _appreciated,”_ Martin tried not to allow the dry delivery of the word sting, “I could have handled anything… untoward… myself.”

Martin’s shoulders dropped, huffing out a sudden, surprised breath. “Christ Jon, you don’t listen to a word you say, do you?” 

Jon frowned. “Is there anything you want, Martin.” Martin was, in all honesty, very much appreciative of Jon sliding off of the subject. Still a little sore about how weirdly off Jon was about accepting any kind of help or inclination that Martin might, say, care about him in some capacity, but glad to move on nonetheless. 

“Well, I did come to do my job, believe it or not- and we’ve finished up following up with the Doe Simmons’ case, as well as that bloke who came writing a thesis on how he let his cat drink his bathwater?” Martin said, moving to sit across from Jon.

Jon’s nose crinkled at the mention of ‘that bloke’. Even though Martin had been the one to have to deal with him, Jon had had to read that statement. Martin genuinely couldn’t tell which was worse. Jon muttered, “Still _weird,_ but not technically _supernatural,”_

“I was just about to say that both ought to be discredited,” Martin said, albeit somewhat reluctantly. He really did want to believe that most of the people coming through the door were telling the truth- honest!- but these cases were just kinda full of crap.

“Both?” Jon said, eyebrow rising. The look that settled on his face was mildly smug, and Martin, not for the first time, wanted to kiss it straight off his stupidly attractive face. Also not for the first time, Martin kicked himself, because the appropriate response ought to be regular annoyance, not… that. Dammit, Jon. “Did the evil neon vending machine not pan out.”

“As it turns out, pretty much every detail of Miss Simmons’ statement was guaranteed false.” He sighed, listing off on his fingers, “She was never on Flight A4130 on the 20th of November of last year; no planes ever disappeared; DB Cooper is the alias of a man from some American case from the 70s; and no vending machine matching her… colorful description has ever existed. Brittany Bauer, the vending machine “owner”, is also a complete fabrication.” 

Jon’s eyebrows inched up his forehead centimeter by centimeter the more points Martin ticked off, not seeming surprised in the slightest. Only bemused. “Was there anything she didn’t lie about?”

“Just her name, which struck me as odd,” Martin said, frowning. “She lied about being an only child and being an orphan- she even has an older brother, named Buck.”

“Somehow, I’m not surprised,” Jon said, unimpressed. Martin would agree there- seemed rather… uninspired, to name one’s son Buck and one’s daughter Doe. Also terribly straight.

“Still, it makes me wonder… you’d think that if she lied about everything else, that she would have had the decency to lie about her real name,” Martin frowned, and perhaps he was a little biased? Maybe a tad hypocritical, what with using his real name on his own pack of lies to the institute? Then again, most of the stuff in his resume _was_ factual- where he worked before, references, all those sorts of things- even if the credentials were not. He’d never lied about an entire plane crashing. Either way, she was kind of a terrible liar. One out of ten.

“Perhaps she wasn’t thinking of it, considering the fact that the most horrifying thing she could come up with was a vending machine stock market game,” Jon intoned.

Martin’s frown deepened, “You aren’t going to let the vending machine thing go, are you.”

“No. I am not.” Jon said, eyes shining with- Martin thought it was mirth, but it was pretty obvious that he was being made fun of. Directly after Jon had been tense earlier too… This man was going to give him whiplash one of these days, and when that happened, Martin was going to march up to his door with the A&E bill and some choice words. “But, now that that investigation is over- _late,_ might I add-”

“Better late than never…” Martin mumbled.

“- we can put you on something more suited to our time,” Jon glanced at the tape recorder, then took out a notepad, jotting down a few notes. “I’ll need you to follow up Miss Emily’s statement, preferably with Tim, once he’s done moving boxes.” Jon paused for a moment, before leaning in conspiratorially. Ah. Here it came. “And… about Tim. Has anything… changed? Has he been feeling any better, or worse, or… how has he been?”

“Not at all’s changed!” Martin lied. Sure, it was such an innocuous little thing- and Tim wasn’t doing anything _wrong_ by dating and generally having a life outside of the Institute- but Martin had a strong feeling that Tim wouldn’t be happy with Jon knowing anything about his personal life that could lead him to further speculation. Well, not a feeling. It was more like he knew because Tim had directly ranted to Martin over drinks about not wanting Jon to know anything about his personal life. That night had been something of a ‘take the piss out of Jon’ night, which still made Martin’s cheeks feel hot with embarrassment to think of- but it had seemed to make Tim feel much better, joking about it all. “He’s gone back to being as enthusiastic as ever- still sighs sometimes, but he’s never once asked to go to the GRO, and he’s never snuck off there as well.”

Tim didn’t owe Jon any explanation about his actions or his life. Martin was going to do his best to respect that.

Jon scrutinized Martin’s face, and Martin put on his most apologetic smile. It technically wasn’t a lie, to say that nothing’s changed, after all. And Martin was very good at giving the runaround if it came down to it. “... I see. Thank you, Martin- I’ll leave it in your hands,” Jon finally said, mollified for the moment. Martin mentally breathed out a sigh of relief. “As for the case- Tim may need to flirt his way into more than a few records, and you’ll have several bar patrons to follow up with. You’ll also be transcribing the tape.”

“And Sasha?” Martin asked.

“Sasha will be working on 0132306,” Jon said, then paused. Biting the inside of his cheek hard enough for Martin to catch the movement, he said, “I will be attempting to minimize all of your… involvement, with following up that particular statement. It leads to a potentially dangerous place. But Sasha insisted on being the one to go, and...”

Martin slowly let out a breath. It wasn’t hard to see that Jon was… a little more careful, these days. And not just in the general hyper-paranoid sense, though, by Christ, was Jon acting strange and paranoid a _lot_ of the time- it was also in the sense of how he treated the three of his assistants. It was a far cry from the Jon who admitted that even though he didn’t want Martin torn limb from limb, well, _someone_ had to do it (so it may as well have been him). 

It wasn’t a bad change, of course, but. Martin desperately wished it wasn’t tied up with Jon’s weird paranoid business. It made it hard to say whether he had some ulterior motive or if he was acting out of genuine care for those working for him.

Martin really wanted to believe that Jon cared, though. He really, really did.

He waited for a moment to see if Jon would elaborate on his thought process. When he did not, Martin sighed a bit. All he could say was, “... Right.” 

Jon handed over the tape recorder, paused, and then dug around his desk. Martin’s eyebrows furrowed as he tried to decipher what the man was muttering under his breath before something was roughly shoved into his hand. A small, emergency first aid kit, painted absolutely hideous neon orange. Martin blinked at it for a moment, confused as Jon finally pulled out a pack of bandaids. 

“Here. Take care of that.” Jon ordered brusquely, gesturing to the papercut. Martin blinked again, taken slightly off guard. It wasn’t really that deep, all told- the cut was a thin one, not even half a millimeter in thickness. “Last thing I need is for you to bleed on any files.” 

Sure, Martin thought with some skepticism. It was just the files. Then again, he was bleeding a little more than normal… “Right- thank you!” He smiled, quickly fixing up the most minor of wounds in the world under Jon’s indirectly watchful eye. Which was to say, Jon busied himself with drinking tea and looking at files but glanced at Martin from the corner of his eye. He waved Martin off with barely a word, leaving Martin to once again ponder on his way back to the assistants’ room.

It was another one of those little moments- the fickle little times with Jon where he would do something undeniably gentle in his own stiff little way- that left Martin the most conflicted. It seemed like a gargantuan task, reconciling the Jon that seemed to always be muttering to himself behind closed doors about some shadow or another and the Jon that had poured his heart out on the storage room floor, trembling and so very sincere. 

It made Martin think that, perhaps, if he could get just a little closer- if Jon would just let him _in_ \- that maybe, just maybe, he could be reasoned with.

Martin sat at his desk in an empty room and started listening to the statement. It wasn’t any use thinking about interventions or heart-to-hearts now- there was still so very much to do. And Martin, quite extraordinarily, was still getting paid to do things.

He sympathized with Emily, chest aching when hearing about her parents. With the knowledge of how her night out ended up, hearing about her looking forward to her one time off (something forced on her, even) sat heavily in his chest. Then, he heard the name _Grey Phlox_ and Martin’s lungs suddenly stilled. 

Rewinding the tape, he listened to the beginning again. _It was all over the news since Monday; some storm being sensationalized as the one of the century, the thing that was set to drown London out._ There had been only one storm that month that matched that description. Martin knew because, on the same day, he’d been gently, insincerely protesting the notion of drinks himself, telling Tim that perhaps that week they should have a boy’s night in instead. 

On October 7th, Tim suggested they go for Friday drinks at the Grey Phlox. Martin hadn’t had the heart to tell him no- not when he seemed so tense, so uncharacteristically nervous about asking. As if waiting for the other shoe to fall.

On October 7th, there was a terrible storm, going for so long and loud that there was no avoiding getting soaked. It had been all over the news since Monday, the 3rd.

The statement never specified the date. But Martin had a sinking feeling.

Martin tried to find anywhere in the statement that proved him wrong. 

It couldn’t have been the _same_ Grey Phlox. (it was, they had gone to the one in Chelsea, the closer the better Tim had said-)

Or if it was, they weren’t there at the same time. (but Martin remembered those lights, the violet light that cast everyone _in hues of mauve, of iris and mixed berry drinks-_ they had seemed so violent, and he was so very buzzed, he’d near taken Tim’s playful offer of a kiss-)

The storm wasn’t that bad. (The storm was terrible and _the surprisingly plentiful crowd_ still stood together in his mind, faces _bled together at the edges-)_

They were at the bar counter that night. They couldn’t have been so close. They couldn’t have been sat right beside a case, right beside a monster seducing its prey into the jaws of death. They couldn’t have been sat so close that they could make out the face of Emily Hawthorne, dressed in makeup and hair pinned back in careful curls by a worrywart older brother hoping she had a bit of reprieve in the storm of life’s making. They couldn’t have been nearly so close that they could have _stopped it._

It was when she mentioned strangers “hooting at some joke about stuffy bosses” when Martin’s stomach dropped down to his shoes. Even as he called down to research, voice quiet even to himself, it didn’t quite feel real when Pam informed him, “She says she was there on the Friday before last- October 7th.” 

He distantly said ‘thank you’, because even when feeling on the verge of vomiting, he couldn’t help but be unflinchingly polite. 

It happened right under their noses. While Tim and Martin were getting sloshed not two feet away, a woman had been lured away and nearly killed. But the worst bit of it? The bit that made Martin’s throat feel drier than summer’s heat? 

Neither of them would have ever _known_ if the stranger mentioned in the statement hadn’t been vampire hunting that night. She would have just been found, dead and drained of blood, while her brother would have stayed up through the night, wondering when his little sister was coming home. Never to know what horrors he accidentally shoved her out into that night.

_How many more supernatural deaths were they near and didn’t even know it?_

Martin didn’t realize he’d stopped listening to the tape until he heard a sharp, _“Martin."_ sounding right by his ear, scaring him half out of his skin. He turned, about to snap at Jon for the damned silent walking, when he realized. It wasn’t Jon. It wasn’t Jon at all.

Tim had apparently returned from moving boxes back to the library. And Martin hadn’t even heard him come, because, for a second, all he could think was about how much _worse_ it could have been. Hands resting lightly over his heart, he craned his neck to look over his shoulder at Tim, whose face was set with worry. 

After a moment, Martin managed to find his voice. “Er, sorry… y-yes?” 

“Martin, are you feeling alright?” Tim asked immediately, mouth creased in concern. “That statement’s not too bad, is it?” _It was storming as badly as anything outside, thundering so loudly that I thought my brain was rattling in my ears,_ said Emily’s hushed voice from the tape recorder, beginning to tremble just the slightest bit in anticipation for remembering the rest of her positively traumatic night. 

“A-ah… no, no it’s. It’s nothing like that,” Martin tried to smile, but it seemed hollow even to himself. “It’s actually getting to the part I listened in on earlier- the poor woman was… rather shaken.”

“Yeah, and you kinda look the same,” Tim said, setting a file aside on his desk. Then, instead of sitting there like he normally did, he moved to where Martin’s desk was pressed against the wall and moved Martin’s things to one side. Martin was so caught off guard at the moment that he didn’t protest when Tim sat down on top of the now clear left side of the desk. Didn’t really have the energy to protest the fact either. 

_Wherever it was, it was run down; it was abandoned in a way that could only be described as “forsaken”._

Martin laughed, somewhat nervously as he tucked his head down, rubbing the back of his neck. It was… embarrassing, to be caught in such a delicate position. Embarrassing and more than a little mortifying. “Well… it’s just a little… she, um, she came in claiming to want to drink human blood? So I was kind of thinking about that-”

“That’s not all,” Tim said, somewhat impatiently. Damn him, and damn the fact that this was a time when Tim decided to be so… perceptive. “What else?”

Well, couldn’t run from the piper forever. (Or get the words to a poet’s telling out of one’s head.) Martin sighed, coming clean. “Emily Hawthorne- the victim in this statement- was lured out of the Grey Phlox on the same night, at the same time we were there. She’s alive!” Martin was quick to assure, seeing Tim’s eyes widening, “She just- she was the woman who came in, and you saw how panicked and shaky she was, and… if. If I had-”

“No- nope. We’re nipping that _right_ in the bud,” Tim said firmly, a dark look flitting over his face. It was so quick, so fleeting that Martin didn’t get to have a look. But, in that flash, he could have sworn that he saw… something like anger. Something like dread. 

“Listen, before you start going through that whole self-flagellation routine- _which you are,”_ Tim said pointedly, and Martin closed his mouth, ashamed to be caught before he could even interrupt. “You gotta think about this rationally. How were we supposed to know that anything supernatural was going down there that night?”

“W-We didn’t, but! But even if we didn’t-” Martin tried to say, but Tim just kept going.

 _“We didn’t know,_ Martin- and you know what, we shouldn’t be expected to know when every spooky _whatever_ is going on!” Tim said, gesturing with his hands, “We weren’t looking for anything weird- we were just two blokes out on the town, having a drink. Having a boy’s night! People don’t need to think about scary shit on a boy’s night!”

“W- maybe normal people,” Martin shot back, mouth turning down, “Maybe- maybe normal people can, but we can’t just- we have responsibilities, and knowledge of how this works! We work _here,_ Tim-”

“Yeah, and so what?” Tim asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

“S-so. So what?” Martin parroted back, disbelieving, _“So what?_ So everything!! We- we had an entire supernaturally charged _attack on our lives,_ we- there’s the possibility of _more_ coming, and we have read statements that could have stopped!! People like Emily Hawthorne! From going through traumatic experiences!! You can’t just-”

“I can’t just _what,_ Martin,” Tim interrupted, shoulders tensing back as he stared Martin down. “I can’t just what? Talk like a sensible person? Try to give advice to a friend that’s gonna start sliding into some complex if left alone?” Martin shrunk back a little, hands slowly beginning to unclench. He hadn’t even noticed he was clenching them. “What do you think I should do? Start getting scared of every little shadow just because Bob Scarester might be waiting beyond the bend with some oogity-boogity _bullshit_ to ruin my day?”

Martin sat in stunned silence for a moment, just looking at Tim, sat upon the desk so that he had to tilt his head back to look up at him. For a moment, he thought Tim was going to continue, leaving a beat for what must have been a rhetorical question to sit in- but Tim didn’t say anything else for a long moment. Martin slowly let out a breath. “... No. No, I’m sorry. That was… wrong of me to say.” He wet his lips, hands slowly twining together. 

Tim looked down at him and, after a long moment of keeping tense, deflated into a slouch, leaning against the back of the desk. He just seemed exhausted. Martin winced slightly- Tim really had been feeling the strain lately, after all… Tim said, “No, no- sorry for snapping. That wasn’t the. Best way. For me to say what I wanted to say. Or even what I wanted to say?” He ran a hand slowly through his hair. "... Yeah."

“Right,” Martin said, heart twisting painfully in his chest. He always _hated_ these kinds of rows-but-not-quite-rows with friends- especially friends like Tim. God, he couldn’t even remember the last time they’d properly fought if they’d fought each other at all. “It’s- it’s alright. Really! It’s been… a long few months.”

“Heh.” Tim cracked a little smile, but it was the fakest one Martin had seen plastered on his face yet. “Yeah… that’s one way to put it.” 

For a few moments, they ruminated in silence. Martin chewed on his bottom lip, thumbs fidgeting against each other as he attempted to figure out the best way to leave off this conversation. It was… obvious, that neither of them were in fit shape to be talking about such sensitive topics, and

Tim was already speaking, gently resting a hand on Martin’s shoulder. “Hey. Let’s start this whole thing over. So, you said that ‘if only’ you had done… something.” Martin nodded mutely. Tim glanced out past Martin, squeezing his shoulder absentmindedly as he thought. “It’s just… it’s just that…” After a bit, he finally seemed to get what he meant to say. “Well, you know that we really help people here, right? _You_ really help a lot of people, in particular,” 

“Oh…” Martin uttered, not at all seeing where this was leading. “Er, yes?”

“With supernatural and spooky and generally frightening things, you know.”

“Yes, I do know. I also work at the spooky monster institute.”

Tim cracked a little lopsided smile at that. “Hey, at least there’s something- in any case.” He shifted back into being serious, “The thing is- we can’t help everyone, you know? We’re just two people, and there’s a whole lot of unexplainable and horrifying stuff out there. Way more than we’re capable of handling. Way more than _you’re_ capable of handling. So… it’s really not fair to yourself, you know? To start beating yourself up over all the people you can’t save.”

“...” Martin wasn’t sure what to say. The only thing he could do was look down at the fidgeting hands in his lap, chastised. Tim gingerly nudged his face to look back up at him.

“It’s just not possible to save everyone. Even the ones you _really_ want to save the most.” Tim said, with such resigned finality that the corners of Martin’s eyes pricked with tears. It didn’t just sound like empty nihilism- it sounded distant and sad. Like Tim was, for just one moment, not in the room with Martin, leaving him alone with the first curls of fog entering his chest. Then, Tim came back to himself, trying to give Martin another reassuring squeeze on the shoulder before pulling his hand away.

“Just… focus on the future, yeah?” Tim finally said, “There’s still plenty more people you’ll be able to help, and if you start falling into a guilt spiral, it’s gonna be harder. For all of us.” He grinned, wholly sincere. “We really wouldn’t know what to do without you, Martin.”

Slowly disengaging his right hand from his left and resting it over Tim’s, Martin gave a small squeeze of his own. He tried to smile back. “... Right. Um… right.” 

“Alright, how’s that? Was that better?” Tim asked, looking Martin up and down, “How’re you feeling?”

“A lot better,” Martin said, slightly relieved. “A whole lot better, actually. … Thank you, Tim.”

Tim grinned, then, something bright and cheerful. If Martin focused on now- on the future- he could completely forget those moments earlier, when Tim seemed oddly distant and totally exhausted. But, well. He still wasn’t ready to let go of some facets of the past just yet, it seemed. 

Tim merely slid off Martin’s desk and took his hand back, nudging Martin with his leg. “Alright, want me to do the transcript on this? You look like you could use a lunch break, Mart,”

Normally, Martin would protest, but. He really, genuinely didn’t want to go back and tackle that statement again. And Tim had said to look to the future, implying that he was already doing that, so… Tim probably wouldn’t have as much of a reaction. He was strong. “... Yeah. Yes, I, actually. I would really appreciate that?” 

“Say no more!” Tim said, stealing Martin’s chair the exact second that Martin vacated it. It took everything in Martin not to trip over the long limbs that slid into his former seat, stumbling a little to catch himself. “Off you go, Marts, I’ll be taking your job for the day,”

“I don’t remember agreeing to that much,” Martin smiled anyway, “and don’t call me that! It’s silly.”

“Marty then.”

“Absolutely _not.”_

“Martismo!” 

“I’m leaving,” Martin called over his shoulder, to which Tim cackled. What a bastard. Martin loved cared so much for him. 

The further he got from the click of the tape recorder going on, though, the more the smile slid off his face. It wasn’t that he was still caught up per se- what Tim had said really _had_ helped- it was just that… Martin still couldn’t get it off his mind. Tim’s rant earlier… it felt as though there was something far more pressing that they would have to speak about. Martin wasn’t sure if he was going to be ready by the time it came.

Walking toward the entrance of the archives, Martin shivered. He should have brought a jacket.

It was cold in the archives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know now that I'm done writing this heart-to-heart, i suddenly understand MarTim... might fuck around with some fics for it in the future tbh


	6. monster/human romances are IN and if mothman cucked me i would thank them

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there's another date with Mister Spooky, a lot of flirting, discussions of mutually wanting to fuck the mothman, and Tim is unconditionally happy for the last time in this fic's 24/25 chapter runtime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey there!!! so this originally was actually supposed to have an extended bit where Martin and Tim go investigating together, but I decided to hold off on the joint investigation until a little later... build up suspense.... establish Joseph and Tim's relationship a bit more so that there's a believable progression with their storylines.... 
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

The next morning, Tim woke up to find a text from Joseph with a blurry picture of a rabbit in a bush attached. It was dated from 5:38 A.M. 

The very same iPhone was telling Tim that it was about 6:12, the light so bright and blinding that Tim had to squint blearily against it to even see, let alone make out the message. Then he realized there were two pictures.

 **us :)** hovered ominously below a hastily shot photo of two rabbits, one big and black and the other overly fluffy and brown, just about tripping over each other as they ran across the park road in front of Joseph. He must’ve had some fast reflexes, Tim guessed, though considering how the brown rabbit was moving so fast that its neck seemed to be just the slightest bit longer than what was natural, he guessed they were just shy of being fast enough to catch a clearer picture. 

For a few seconds, Tim wondered what the hell this all meant. Not in a weird paranoid sense (unlike _some people_ Tim didn’t immediately suspect people over cute animal pics), but in the more existential sense of “when did I learn how to read again?” because Tim didn’t remember how to read and was too groggy to think like a sentient being with higher brain functioning. Then, as he slowly became somewhat more cognizant, it clicked into place. Half-awake, he gingerly set the phone face down on the mattress and buried his face in his pillow. 

_Cute-_ Joe was, undoubtedly, absolutely adorable? He almost couldn’t handle it, especially not when it came on so suddenly and unannounced during a time when Tim usually wasn’t alive. Tim was just a weak little man for gentle giants and Joseph was at the top of the list. And the top of the height chart. Badum-tss. That joke didn't deserve a badum-tss, but Tim was too groggy to care about his misuse of comedic drums in his brain.

Three minutes into the day and it was already shaping up to be _way_ better than yesterday.

(Yesterday, the statement was typed up as he ignored how dry his mouth had gotten, hearing Emily Hawthorne describe the bar she’d been at. Caught up in his thoughts, fingers mechanically typing from the instinct of years in publishing and clicking away on his keyboard )

Not wanting to leave him on read (even if Tim couldn’t be blamed if he did, just because, how was this man up at 5am? possibly earlier-?) he answered with a little ‘awww, sweet!!! theyre just lil boys’, slowly kicking the covers off of himself. He still wasn’t really awake enough to sit up, and his bed was still _very_ comfortable, but he was going to have to get up at seven anyway and it just didn’t make sense to try and sleep for maybe half an hour more and more likely than not feel grumpy as shit afterward. May as well lay in bed for some of that half-hour and stew on twitter like a functioning adult instead.

Joseph’s reply was pretty much instantaneous. _Good morning! hope i didn’t wake you :c_ Tim cracked a smile at that, huffing to himself as he shimmied, centimeter by centimeter, toward the edge of the bed. On second thought, he was going to get up, dammit- just see if he wouldn’t.

 _nah i was already getting up anyway,_ Tim texted, _the bunnies were a nice surprise !!_ The carpet on the floor was weirdly cold under his bare feet, and Tim shuddered, just barely resisting the urge to wrap a blanket around his torso. He slept in his boxers- to give in and cover himself up for the short trek to his closet felt way too much like he was admitting defeat to the powers that be, and the powers that be seemed to always be forcing Tim into wearing pants. Or a skirt, occasionally- but he didn’t have enough fancy shirts to coordinate with the skirts he did have, so he usually went for pants more often than not.

There may have been a dress code in the Archives, but if there was, Tim sure as hell didn’t know it. He still had more professional clothing from publishing in his closet- had even gone to the Magnus Institute in sweater vests and pressed slacks and stupid expensive socks that matched those pants (just in case any part of his ankle might have shown) those first few weeks at research- but it wasn’t like anyone on Jon’s team stuck to it. 

Martin had his less-than-professional jumpers, Jon had his mismatched socks and gold-chain grandma glasses retainer, and neither chewed Tim’s ear off for trying to wear white socks with black pants instead of black socks like his mum had while sending him off to his first job interview all those years ago. 

(Sasha used to break the dress code subtly and often- wearing skirts that were an inch too long, blouses too loose or large, jackets and heels that certainly weren’t for a professional environment- but now, it seemed almost as if she had one single, professional outfit that she wore every day. Tim wanted to ask her why she kept washing it every day, but…)

He really missed his mum, sometimes. They used to talk all the time about his life and work and things besides. He should probably find time to actually call her this week. Tim told himself this every week, of course, but this week he really would. (He wouldn’t.)

He was in the middle of brushing his teeth when his phone pinged, a full eight minutes after Tim had sent his last text. _There were a lot more rabbits than usual this morning- it was nice :D_ followed by _you can go for weeks in gunnersbury without seeing any animals around this time you know?_

 _bit of a drive there ?_ Tim asked, toothpaste foam hanging off the corner of his mouth as he rinsed it out with water. They were in Great West Plaza- so it was about a ten-minute drive if anyone wanted to wander around that park. Tim never did like heading there, though- the museum they had just seemed dull? And it wasn’t like he ever had time to take advantage of the boating pond or go to the cafe there. It was pretty, sure, but...

 _Oh, i walked_ Joseph informed him as Tim tried to carefully slick back his hair. He cursed lightly as he read that, and then cursed a little more when some of the hair gel fell on his t-shirt. Not that he was particularly worried about showing up looking less than professional- a t-shirt and jeans were enough most days- but it was the _principle_ of the thing.

 _isn’t that a 40 min walk ??? ?_ Tim paused, then added an additional _?_ for good measure, wiping some of the leftover hair gel on his other hand on his jeans. He was basically ready to go by then- which, looking at the time, meant that he actually had some free time after the hour-long commute that he would have otherwise spent scrolling through social media in bed.

The flat was still cold, even with clothes being situated on his person and a cursory glance at the heater showing that it should have been warmer. Frowning, Tim hoped that the heating wasn’t out. The last thing he needed was that on top of everything else. Checking his phone, he saw Joe’s message of _it’s faster if you run there! i really like running :)_ and let out a gentle snort. Tim hadn’t been fully convinced that morning people genuinely existed and _enjoyed_ being morning people before now. Tim still wasn’t seeing the appeal, but it was nice to know that morning people weren’t some kind of health industry conspiracy!

He laughed a little at the thought, but the sound hit his ears strangely hollowly, in the total emptiness of his flat. Tim was suddenly aware of how alone he was in this fairly small flat, strangely isolated and up so early that he couldn’t hear anything from the rest of the fourth floor or outside bar the faint trill of birds.

If he listened closely, he could maybe hear the shuffling beneath his feet of Joe in his flat, but that was about it. Tim was alone in a cold room, patting his pocket for wallet and keys, laughing at a joke only he could hear.

On second thought, maybe he ought to get out of here and get on the commute early.

 _me too,_ Tim texted Joe, _but i don’t get to run for fun anymore :(_

Feeling restless, after Tim had his things and a light jacket, he stepped out the house, opting to take the stairs down rather than the elevator. The nerves in his legs itched with sudden disuse, as if the relatively normal (albeit vaguely unhealthy) six hours of sleep the night before had been years. And besides, the elevator was noisy and creaked sometimes, and Tim really didn’t have the time or patience to deal with it. At least not without coffee. 

Aw,shit, he forgot breakfast. He’d been in such a hurry to get the fuck out of his house that he’d forgotten to brew the bare minimum prerequisite of morning coffee. Ah, well. Guess he could make a stopover at that cafe Sasha had mentioned in that one tape he’d reviewed, once- but what was the name of it…? 

(He remembered, belatedly, that the tape she mentioned the cafe on was one of the ones that had gone missing, according to Sims.)

(He could just ask, but nowadays, whenever he tried to talk to Sasha, she…)

 _we should go running sometime !_ Joseph texted him as he made his way down the stairs to the third floor. _if you’re free i mekdmn_ Tim wondered at the sudden keysmash for a split second when, the exact moment he received Joseph’s text, he unthinkingly slammed into a taller form on the third-floor landing. “Shit-” Tim swore, looking up to make sure the stranger was alright before finding the very person he’d just been texting. 

Joseph’s phone slid out from his grip from the impact, but he was damn quick with his reflexes- holding onto the metal railing with one hand, he leaned out and managed to catch it before it could tumble on the stairs leading below. The look of total concentration on his face was more than a little attractive, and with his hair damp slicked back, his cheekbones seemed all the more severe. This was a totally inappropriate thought to be having at that moment, but Joe was a pretty man, and he seemed totally unaffected by the impact. 

Shaking himself from his early morning caffeine-deprived reverie, Tim gave the man a glance over, making sure he was fine. He certainly didn’t look bruised in any way- the only thing that was really mussed was his tie, a terrible lime-green-stripes-on-navy-blue thing that clashed horribly with his grey wool cardigan and purple undershirt, and not in the fun gay way. 

Not trusting himself to comment on the crooked tie without saying something about _all that,_ Tim said, sheepish, “Sorry- I wasn’t looking where I was going,” 

“It’s fine,” Joseph said quietly a little smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, “I wasn’t much better, texting without paying attention…”

“Whoever you must’ve been texting, they must be quite the catch,” Tim said, eyebrows wiggling. 

Joseph hummed, leaning himself back against the railing so that part of his upper body hung off it. It was honestly a little disconcerting- Tim could never bring himself to do that on the stairs, with a story drop behind him… that took a dizzying amount of courage. “I _guess_ you could say that… he’s definitely got more than a few… assets.”

“Oooh, now I’m jealous,” Tim grinned despite himself, even though he was still acting like he didn’t know full well who Joe was texting, “this mystery man wouldn’t have the assets of being un- _bearably_ gorgeous and charming, would he?”

“In anything he wears,” Joseph replied, fiddling idly with the black messenger bag over his shoulder, “even half-naked and wearing a blanket like an adorably confused prince- Prince Charming doesn’t even begin to cut it.”

“Mister Spooky, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you _fancy_ this man,” Tim fake-gasped, attempting to channel the kind of soap opera energy that bled from Spanish soap memes. It didn’t quite work, in the quiet of the stairwell,but Tim would keep working at it.

“... I may… just a smidge ....” Joseph said, turning his head to the side and glancing back at Tim coquettishly. Seriously, he had to be doing that on purpose- and Tim would be lying if he said he didn’t find it incredibly attractive. Even if that pretty face was attached to a body wearing a tie so ugly that Tim actively wished his retinas would just cut out in the style of a television feed going to static.

Tim uttered what was supposed to be a sound of melodramatic Austenian despair, but which got garbled somewhere along the way out his throat into something more akin to a manic mad scientist laugh in the making by an alien who had never been in contact with the trope. His hand rested over his heart as he moaned, “Oh! My heart! Shattered and forsaken, left along the cobbles to the cold! You, Joseph Spooky, are a scoundrel and a tempter,” 

Joseph actually smiled at that, something that lit up his entire face and made Tim’s heart melt a bit, “You say that as if you don’t like it?”

“Well, you have me there,” Tim made a show of ceding with a flourishing wave of the hand, eyes crinkling at the corners with the force of his own smile. “Shall we head on out?”

Really, they should have been walking and talking from the outset- Tim knew that they both worked in Chelsea, with Tim going to the Institute and Joe going to the Kensington and Chelsea Register Office, and it was an hour commute out from Brentford. 

But Tim hadn’t had the sense before of just how easy it was to talk to Joe? It was incredibly easy to talk to him, as they went down the narrow staircase nearly arm in arm, and moreover, it was fun! Of course, their conversation over breakfast that first Saturday had been just as easy, but being able to flirt with each other- Tim in his usual bravado and Joseph in his own little way of sly double meanings and quiet smiles- and being able to talk more about themselves was just genuinely nice. It was all perfectly normal conversation- and Tim had been missing that. He’d been missing that quite a bit.

Tim was halfway through a mini infodump on how disastrous the cozy catastrophe genre of the 1950s could get (a conversation starting with “I was in publishing for a bit- you’d be surprised what people try to get through, especially when I was working with the speculative lit branch,” “Lot of Doctor Who rip-offs, I imagine-”) when they reached the train station. That was also the point when his stomach gave an embarrassing growl- right in the middle of complaining about the weird prevalence of cannibal children in the genre, no less.

Joe’s eyebrow raised as he obviously stifled a little laugh. “Should I be worried about that?”

“I mean,” Tim said, winking, “you _are_ cute enough to eat- so you never know!”

That was a terrible line and Tim knew it, but he was caught off guard by the look in Joe’s eyes. They widened, and sure, Joe was giving a fond little look now; but Tim could have sworn that there was a flash of… fear, in his eyes. For just a moment. It was a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ kind of thing, but it was just enough to put Tim off-kilter. 

So, joking about cannibalism- a big no. He honestly wanted to smack himself because he knew most people weren’t into that kind of gallows humor. (He’d be lying, though, if he said there wasn’t a strange sense of relief to that.)

“I’m too good a company to eat,” Joe said, “Speaking of- there’s a cafe nearby. We should get something to eat.”

“When do you get to work?” Tim asked, glad of the topic change, “Can’t hold you back-”

“When do _you_ get to work?” Joe gently nudged Tim’s side, smiling. “I don’t technically need to be there until ten, so…” 

“Oh, well,” Tim’s eyes lit up as he lied easily, “Me neither! Today’s a late day.” Not really. He was supposed to be in at nine o'clock sharp- but, well, maybe he just so happened to be tied up in commute this morning, which Jon must know the dangers of all too well, what with following him an hour away from the institute just to see if Tim was doing any nefarious deeds. Or maybe Tim was just sick. Who was to say? Not his boss, that was for damn sure. Tim was just going to give himself a little miniature vacation, it was fine, “Seems like the perfect time for date number three,”

“Wouldn’t this be the second?” Joe questioned, eyes searching the street ahead of them. His lips pursed. “Thought there was a coffee and kebab place…” 

“Jenny’s?” Tim idly said, fingers twitching slightly. Oof, it was… way chillier than he’d thought it would have been. “I was thinking this was the third, to be honest? You _did_ make me those pancakes- which was, by the way, the best breakfast I’ve had,” Tim sometimes was hit with a mild craving for them, actually, but he wasn’t sure if it was a craving for the pancakes themselves or the prospect of a home-cooked meal that didn’t take less than five minutes. 

“Again, thank you pancakes aren’t a viable date- unless you count the part where we stumbled into your flat drunk as part of it,” Joe said, letting out a little ‘ah’ as he spotted a sign in the distance. 

Tim snorted, “Hey, I just might! What then?” 

“Then that’d be _embarrassing,”_ Joe sighed, though it didn’t seem sincere, “because I woke up with makeup stains on your pillow and the knowledge that you definitely saw the- you know, something you shouldn’t have,”

“The- oh!” Tim grinned impishly, a foggy, mostly forgotten memory springing up- the tramp stamp, right on Joe’s lower back… he got just the barest peek of an inked pom-pom tail. Tim definitely remembered asking what the story behind the rabbit tail was, but he no longer remembered the answer- the curse of alcohol still hung thick, it seemed. “Don’t worry, my lips are sealed,” He mimed zipping them up and throwing away the key. 

“Thank you,” Joe said, running a hand over his hair. Despite the hair gel and dampness from what Tim guessed was a shower dissipating, the hair at the nape of his neck was already beginning to curl back up, and Tim really wanted to run his fingers through it. That could come later, though- for right then, it was time for coffee.

They found a little cafe and ordered- a chai latte with extra whip for Tim and a hot chocolate for Joseph- and found the time to talk even more.

“So, what kind of monster would you get with if given the chance?” 

Tim watched as Joseph choked suddenly on his drink, turning a very interesting shade of bright pink at the question. He scooted around the little window booth they were sat at to pat Joe’s back, eyebrows raising in amusement. Normally the monsterfuckery question didn’t get such an _enthusiastic_ response! As Joseph came back to himself, he asked, just the slightest bit strangled, “Wh-h-what um. Brought this on?”

“Oh, just one of my third date questions,” Tim shrugged a bit, eyes twinkling. “We talked so much the last couple of times that I ran out of the usual second-date ones,”

Joseph’s face twisted into something mildly incredulous, “You have a _list_ of questions to ask on consecutive dates?”

“It’s not as technical as all that!” Tim laughed, shaking his head, “‘s not like I have anything physically _written down_ or anything- there’s just some things I like to know about my partners! And top of the list? Monsterfuckery- I want to know if I could lose you to the Jersey Devil,”

Joe cracked a smile at that, shoulders shaking with a silent laugh. “Well I can tell you this much- I don’t want anything to do with the Jersey Devil.” He sipped his drink, expression slipping into something more thoughtful. Tim elected not to say a word, waiting in eager anticipation as the light filtered across Joe’s face, lighting up his eyes in a way that made them look like liquid amber. If Tim was using this moment as just an excuse to admire this man, well, that was his business.

“I think, though…” Joseph hummed thoughtfully as Tim took a sip of his latte, “I think that, if presented with any monsters, I’d still choose humans. Humans are the real monsters themselves a lot of the time, you know? But I think that’s basically fine. Even if humans don’t have the fangs or claws or extra appendages, there’s still a lot to love in them, in every form. Humans are… more vulnerable, but that just makes them better monsters, if that’s what they choose to be- better fighters for what they love, and better lovers of those things, too...” Joe’s eyes met Tim’s again over the rim of the cup he brought to his mouth. “Does that make any sense?” 

Tim blinked, taken aback. It took him a moment to collect his thoughts because Joe’s answer had been so completely earnest and his expression so sweet that it took the air out his lungs. “... Yeah. Yeah, it does. That’s- that’s a nice way to put it.”

Joseph blushed, taking another quiet sip of his hot chocolate before saying, “And, ah- what about yourself? Do you have… any monsters in mind?” 

Tim hissed out a breath through his teeth, laughing somewhat nervously. “Okay, so. Funny, that- that was genuinely the sweetest and most insightful answers anyone’s given me to that, but honestly? I was just going to say that I’d fuck mothman.” 

Joe barked out a laugh then, longer and louder than anything Tim had heard from him before. It was mildly wheezy and caught in this little _hihihihih_ that sounded a little like a donkey braying, and Tim wanted to hear that laugh for the rest of his life. God, he really needed to get out more, if he was already being turned into this much of a romantic. Tim grinned in turn and ended up barking out a laugh of his own when, still breathless, Joe said, “I change my mind. I also want to fuck the moth man.” 

“Ah~ to be cucked by the mothman…” Tim said dreamily, resting his chin on the back of one hand, “if only I could be so lucky...”

“Isn’t it more accurate to say that you’re the one cucking moth man now?” Joseph asked, and Tim had never wanted to kiss anyone more in his life.

They kept talking for a long while after that, and it was all about little things. Safe things. Topics that didn’t have to do with silver worms or bosses or paranoia or murder most foul.

It was conversation Tim hadn’t noticed he sorely missed. 

* * *

As they were pulling up into their last stop in Chelsea, Joseph asked a question, looking oddly guilty. “So, the Magnus Institute…” Tim silently winced, waiting for the inevitability of something backhandedly insulting or overly interrogatory. People generally didn’t take his job all that seriously- or, if they did, they tended to have very strong opinions on it.

But, Joseph surprised him by asking, “Has there… ever been any cases of monsters and humans… dating?”

Tim thought for a moment. Then he said, “I’m not sure, honestly. Do you want me to go see?”

Joseph’s answer was immediate, and the relief was as strange as it was palpable. “Yes. Yes, thank you.”

Tim smiled, not really understanding the exchange that had just occurred, but figuring that Joe would explain later on. And there would be a later on, of course- because they’d both agreed, after finishing their drinks and walking back to the station arm in arm, to make this a regular routine.

It would mean getting up a little early, but Tim could live with it.

* * *

Jon didn’t even bat an eyelash when Tim came in late. Or bat any eyes. Or even look in his direction. Tim was, for once, extremely grateful for the weird cocktail of crazy that Jon’s weird obsessive paranoia and workaholism caused, because it didn’t seem as though he had even left his office from the moment he came in. It meant that Martin was a tad anxious, but they could work on that in a bit.

Tim only stayed in long enough to punch in before he heading back out to the Grey Phlox. He still had some work to do with this case.


	7. Lady of the Nets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Statement of Doe Simmons, regarding the first time she ever smelled something sweet and a mysterious woman in the river.
> 
> (Supplemental: Tim has been acting weirder than normal. Jon suspects that whatever plan he may be concocting, it is being put into motion- meaning he's in danger, but also meaning that he may soon learn why Tim is at the Magnus Institute...)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chapter count went up again! Whoops. I mean, it's probably a good thing, since the reason it went up is 1) I'm a little into s3 now and Tim's so sad about Sasha and :c so maybe Tims can have little a more happiness... as a treat... and 2) Lesbians. 2 is especially important to me and you'll see why. In any case, I hope you enjoy!!
> 
> TW for this chapter’s statement: mild gore, possible cannibalism, wannabe vampirism. Mentioned nongraphic body horror

“Supplemental,” Jon muttered into his tape recorder, angling himself away from the door so that he could more easily hide the recorder in case of any unwanted intrusions. And while he wasn’t expecting any- what with Tim out and about following up on both the bathwater case and the case of a young man who claimed to have popped two bulbous, seven-kilogram boils on his chest; Sasha going to the taxidermy shop mentioned in case  0132306 once again; Martin doing some minor alphabetizing- he could never be too careful. He had the worst luck when it came to people walking in while he was doing these.

He paused, thinking that perhaps he heard something outside- but there was nothing. Nothing save for a door somewhere else in the hall closing. Christ. He repeated, “... Supplemental. There is  _ definitely  _ something going on with Tim, which Martin either doesn’t see or- or doesn’t view as harmful to his personal wellbeing.

“On Tuesday, Tim arrived a full hour late, with an odd look on his face. He was- smiling. Except it wasn’t the kind of smile where he was just idle or smiling at someone; it seemed strangely vacant. I saw him through a crack in my office door, but he didn’t seem to notice me looking- if he was even noticing anything at all. After greeting Martin, he seemed to return to his usual mannerisms.

“For the past few days, Tim has been spending as much time as he can investigating the case of Emily Hawthorne, alone. Martin mentioned that when he offered to help Tim, he was waved off with a smile and a ‘chipper’, “I’ve got this,” before Tim all but ran out of the Archives. Eventually, Martin says he was asked for help on something seemingly unrelated- finding cases of things that aren’t human, and humans… coexisting. Specifically in a romantic context.”

Jon paused, eyebrows furrowing. There were these little pieces, so strange and out there that it was honestly taking a bit to process. Tim had always been comfortable with investigation, sure, but some of the places he was going with Hawthorne’s case seemed like overkill- going not only to the bar but searching the area around it, and then flirting his way into a local hospital to look for medical records… and Martin seemed just as baffled by his investigation as well. Meaning Tim wasn’t merely keeping Jon in the dark.

Of course, Martin had shrugged it off, saying that Tim would likely explain his theory in due time. Martin didn’t understand. There  _ wasn’t  _ much time, not really- not with the odd behavior, and especially not with the avenue of research Tim was engaging in. What Jon knew so far were little scraps, barely enough to use for speculation; but he had to do  _ something  _ with them. Anything to help shape the direction Jon would have to take looking into this.

“What concerns me is the insistence on monster and human cohabitation,” Jon finally said after a moment, a cold shudder running down his spine. “It seems to be utterly disjointed from the fascination with Miss Hawthorne’s case, and yet Tim has a fascination with it that had even led him to come into my office yesterday. He asked me if I had recorded any statements regarding the subject- and when I asked why he wanted to know, his only answer was that smile he used to get out of trouble. The one that he puts on when he tries to play innocent. “Personal interest,” was what he told me. I don’t believe it for a second.”

Tim didn’t really go into Jon’s office anymore. Over the past few months, his direct contact with Jon had been less and less- in fact, the last time Jon remembered Tim coming in of his own volition, it had been to ask about Basira. 

Wetting his lip, Jon said, “There has to be a connection here that I’m not seeing as of yet. A connection that Tim is trying to hide- but it appears as though whatever Tim may be planning, he’s gotten sloppy. He’s revealed a possible motive for joining the Magnus Institute. The question on my mind, however, is: why now? Why this case? It could be that he had a prior connection to Emily Hawthorne, but neither showed any signs of recognizing the other. It could be that there is… something. that the so-called ‘vampire-eater’ might have that he wants. Or he may think that romance factors into the case in some way… Whatever the case, while it may not be definitive proof that- that. He killed Gertrude, if he did kill her. It is the best lead I have looking into Tim’s background as of now.

“However, there is still a more pressing lead in the case of Gertrude. I will be breaking into her flat tomorrow night, as close to midnight as I can manage. … I only hope that whatever is left there, it will not be-” 

“- and you know, if you take a left here…”

Jon’s muscles froze as he heard Martin’s voice drifting from the door. Dammit. God  _ dammit,  _ just what he needed. He still hadn’t said how he would break in yet- but, it was safer to end the recording here, muttering a small ‘end recording’ before stuffing it in a desk drawer. 

Moments later, Martin opened the door, belatedly knocking on the wood as he sheepishly poked his head in. There were locks of shaggy black hair beginning to fall into his eyes, and it was far easier to summon annoyance at that, at the fact that Martin  _ really  _ needed a damn haircut so that Jon wouldn’t have the inconvenient urge to shove his hair out the way himself. Maybe he should start keeping hair ties around- not like Jon was getting a haircut any time soon himself, anyhow... 

“Ah, Jon? Are you busy?” Martin said, brushing his hair out of his eyes with the back of his hand. “Miss Simmons would like to give another statement,” 

“Miss Simmons?” Jon questioned, displeased by the sight of the woman who poked her head from behind Martin and gave a wide smile. He recognized her from the cleft lip and ‘striking’ green eyes, as Martin had called them when describing her the previous week. Martin had been the one to provide her the forms for her first fraudulent statement- and Jon wasn’t exactly chipper to see her return.

“Doe Simmons,” She introduced herself, muttering a quick ‘’scuse me’ to Martin as she turned sideways to brush past him through the doorway and into Jon’s office. Cropped hair puffed slightly out from under her chestnut-colored newsboy cap as she swept it off her head, two locks of wavy hair much longer than the rest framing either side of a round, smiling face as the rest of her hair settled in feathery tufts. Her other hand swept out for a shake, voice just slightly too loud and fast, accent not quite London and not quite American. She bled exuberant energy from a body only slightly taller than Jon’s as she violently shook Jon’s hand, gripping so hard that the points of her french manicure dug into his skin as she rapidly spoke, “Pleasure to meet you proper this time, mister Archivist! I’ll tell you what, you got yourself a fuck all big labyrinth down here- think this is the second time I got lost-”

Jon yanked his hand away, frowning as he interrupted her spiel, which was sounding uncomfortably close to the kind of quick smooth talking of an auctioneer, “Yes, well. I was under the impression you wouldn’t be returning, after your last little yarn.”

“Ohhh, guess you still remember that, huh?” Doe said, infuriatingly carefree as she fell back into the chair across from Jon’s desk, arranging her limbs languidly. “Honest to God? I’m… sorry, about that. It was supposed to be all in good fun! Didn’t think you’d take the evil vending machine serious,” Behind her, Martin frowned a little, shoulders drawing inward as he let himself in and quietly closed the door. 

It irked Jon. Who was Doe Simmons to decide what was and wasn’t seriously worth looking into?  _ She  _ didn’t work here,  _ she  _ hadn’t been doggedly (if futilely) trying to find connections between her narratively unimaginative tall tale and what they already knew, and  _ she  _ didn’t seem to take things seriously when it came to the supernatural. Or take much of anything seriously at all. “Well, we do investigative work, believe it or not. Considering the results of our last investigation has shown you to be a compulsive liar, I’m surprised you’ve come back.”

“Yeah, well,” Doe laughed, but it was an uncomfortable sort of laugh. The kind that someone laughed when they were caught red-handed in a lie, “it’s- uh, not compulsive if that makes you feel any better? It was just for that statement- lost a bet with my brother over drinks and got dared to give a sham statement. He doesn’t take you all that seriously…” Her face fell a bit as she fidgeted, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t.”

“I’m sure,” Jon said drily. 

“Jon,” Martin said somewhat firmly, looking at him. Still with that slight frown to his mouth. Jon wished he would stop doing that, already- it was distracting. “She really does have a statement this time. You’ll want to hear this.”

“... Fine,” Jon said, bringing the official tape recorder to the desk and clicking it on just in time to catch Doe snorting in amusement. His eyes narrowed as he regarded her. “Is there a problem?”

“No, no, not at all,” Doe was quick to say, lip curled up mischievously, “I was just thinking that it’s fitting, is all. The tape recorder?” She rested a finger over her mouth as the corner of her eyes crinkled. “Works with the whole  _ aesthetic  _ you have here- it’s charming, in a grandma sort of way.” 

Jon genuinely couldn’t tell if that was a compliment or not, so he didn’t chance it. “I would like to ask that we keep comments about my… ‘grandma charm’, to a minimum, please. About your statement…”

“Oh yeah!” Doe said as if she’d completely forgotten she had a reason to be here. Whatever she was about to say had better have been damn good, because Jon still wasn’t convinced this wasn’t some kind of game to her. If this was another con, he was going to have some  _ very  _ strong words for Martin and his much-too-fluffy-to-be-professional hair. The woman across from him settled down, leaning forward. “This has to do with accidentally encountering something… probably not human, that smelled sweet, and a girl I found in some fishing nets along the Thames, on Tuesday night.” 

Alright. So it appeared that there was a kernel of something truthful in this statement after all.

Jon reiterated for the record, “Statement of Doe Simmons, regarding some strange happenings near the River Thames on October the 18th, recorded October the 21st, 2016. Statement taken directly from subject.”

“Statement begins.”

* * *

Alright, first thing’s first- there’s some background stuff you should probably know, before anything else. 

The first thing, the thing that matters most as to why this story is so weird to me, is that I can’t actually taste or smell anything sweet. I know, sounds like the sort of contrived fake-medical condition that telly hack Doc Martin would make up for some dumbass romance storyline about “finding that special someone that will get me to taste something sweet for the very first time in my life~~” but it’s a real thing. Hypogeusia, I’m told. A decreased ability in tasting things.

Ever since childhood, I’ve been wholly unable to taste anything sweet. Give me chocolate and it’s like biting into a bitter bar of dusty shit; give me ice cream and all I get is glorified cream. Some other stuff’s been affected too- got a hard time with sour or salty tastes too, see, but I can still kind of faintly taste them. 

The one taste I could taste with any clarity was umami. You know. The meat flavor. 

[pause] 

… But, well, the other flavors don’t really matter to this story much. It’s just the sweetness. 

The second thing that’s important here is the reason why I was out at 2AM on a Tuesday night- or, I guess, Wednesday morning would be more accurate to say? I wasn’t really thinking about times all too intently at that moment, you know. I was preoccupied. 

It… it was my brother, Buck. Truth is, we’re actually twins- grew up pretty much attached at the hip since birth, and stayed stubbornly attached when our folks hopped us across the pond to jolly old England back in sixth form. We never could get away with the usual twin shenanigans of swapping places on account of my lip and his clipped ear, but honestly? I’d say that trying to find ways to pull off the old twins bait-n-switch and failing brought us even closer together. So, when he suggested we live together until we could both save up enough to get our own houses, it seemed intuitive to move in.

Buck and I just about never fight. The closest thing we’ve had was maybe that little row after he figured out I was always going to be taller than him, but once I said he could pretend to be the older twin- I was actually born first by about a minute- he seemed fine. He’s seemed fine for years, even though he’s been getting busy doing whatever he does with taxes and even though I’ve got my job at the auction house. 

Thing is, he’s started to… disappear. For long stretches of time, he’ll suddenly walk away from his job and head down south. He told me that it was always to go to the hunting cabin we keep near Dorchester, but it seems… so weirdly out of character? For him. Both because he’s usually the responsible sort, and because I’ve never gotten an invitation to tag along.

We usually go hunting together, see; have since Pop showed us back when we lived in the states, talking about keeping up the family tradition- and Buck’s always had me there to help with the cleanup. And, listen- I know that he’s an adult and he’s perfectly entitled to having time alone and away from family. I get it. We all need to destress, and sometimes it can be hard to do that when a possible source of that stress is in the same house. But he disappears for a full week outside of deer hunting season when the only thing he likes hunting are deer and expects me to believe he’s down there for a spot of pheasant shooting? I don’t buy it.

Usually, I’d just be annoyed by his absence, you know. Not because of the absence but because he always sounds like he’s  _ hiding  _ something, and when you’re a twin, the thought of hiding secrets from each other is just  _ weird.  _ But I never pry, and he never gave a reason to be worried. Until this past month.

On the first, he just suddenly packed a small duffel bag and left. It had been a real rough night, then- some of the potential buyers didn’t show, and when Salesa entered the auction for a bow and arrow set- easily thousands of years old, with the bronze, pyramid-shape arrowheads dating it to about the time of Sparta, likely meant to pierce armor- everyone got so intimidated that not even my fastest sweet-talking could get anyone to budge! And he was a  _ haggler  _ on top of that. Who ever heard of haggling on the auction you just won? … Not that it had any bids besides the stated price… Fucker walked off with something that could’ve made us tens of thousands for just five hundred! Can you even believe that?

… I’m digressing. Sorry. That- that guy just makes me so  _ mad, _ you know? Can’t  _ stand  _ people like him. Point is, it was a terrible night, and my boss got snippy with me when I had to deliver the news, and I was looking forward to bitching about it all to Buck while downing as much cinnamon whiskey as I could physically hold in my body. But when I got back, Buck was already gone, and some of his clothes were too.

Not… not everything was gone, though, so I figured he was just going to come back. I figured he would be back by the next week, and then I could chew him another chipped ear for not at least telling me where he went so that I wouldn’t worry- but he didn’t. 

I waited all week for something to happen, or for Buck to text me he’d gone to Dorchester, but there was nothing. I texted him, the week after I found him gone- it was storming like anything out there, that night. I remember how hard the windows had rattled across from me as I sat at our kitchen table, one elbow holding it down so that the table leg that’s just a little too short didn’t bang against the floor with every movement I made, shifting restlessly in my sleep. 

You know about that storm, don’t you? The worst London has had, the news were calling it, with rain that beat down against your back like coffin nails in the wood meant to encase only the meanest, sickest kinds of bastard. Lots of lightning strikes, I heard. Dunno if it’s true or just rumors, but word had it that a  _ lot  _ of people had to be wheeled in for lightning strike injuries. 

I texted Buck, told him to please, please just. Just get a hotel, or stay in Dorchester for a bit longer, and not to risk it. He never texted back, but when I checked, he put me on read. I was pissed at that, of course, but at the very least he was alive and well enough to check his texts. That was all I had to comfort myself as I tried to pull my bathrobe tighter around myself, the lights in the flat flickering with the force of the thunder banging against the building outside. 

I figured that he’d be just a day late. But one week became two weeks, and then longer than that. By the time the eighteenth had rolled around, I was getting so worried that it was impossible for me to even sit still. So, after leaving work for the day, I told the boss that I was taking the next few days off. He got pissy, but what was he gonna do? Find someone else? I have to laugh. 

I spent most of that evening trying to figure out what to do. I don’t trust police much- unless a crime has things spelled out pretty like, they’ll sit back on their haunches and ask if maybe you were just being a paranoid idiot instead of reporting something serious. Not in as many words, but you get the gist. They’d take one look at the hunting cabin, at Buck’s record of just up and leaving, and chalk it up to just his flights of fancy. So I couldn’t go to the police. My brother’s work has a strict policy about asking after employees, so even if I sweet-talked them, there wasn’t any chance I was going to know if my brother told them anything of where he was going.

So, I decided to just go down there myself.  **That** was what led me toward trying to find a twenty-four-hour retailer to start stocking up since sleep wasn’t coming and the sooner I left off south, the better. There’s a Tesco Express on Charing Cross Road, so I made my way there, mentally running through a quick list of last-minute travel supplies.

I… don’t know how to describe knowing that I was smelling something ‘sweet’. There were a couple of pubs in the area, in well-lit spots with drunken patrons just beginning to stumble out into the street, so, by all means, the only thing I should have smelled were the sharp, bitter scents of drink and the unkempt men that consumed it. The slightly fetid stench covered the area as I walked, umbrella in hand- not for the rain, because it was a cloudless night, but to be used as an innocuous-seeming weapon, should anyone get any ideas- down the street.

But, weaving underneath the stink of body odors from shambling interlopers periodically passing me by and the somewhat watered down corruption of the Thames in the distance, there was… something else. It was- it was cloying, and not-sharp, contrasting with the faint bitter scents around me. It- it was almost. Citrusy? But it didn’t smell like citrus, more like, the scent had the chemical quality of something flavored intensely with lemon, without smelling like lemons at all. 

I don’t know why that was enough to derail me from my late-night Tesco scouring, but it was. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten my brother or anything, so please don’t think that! It’s just that… this was the first time I had ever smelled anything remotely like this. In twenty-six years, nothing has ever even come close to the sweet smell- and it wasn’t as though I was going to do anything about it! I just needed to  _ know  _ what had that scent, and why it was so strong. I was just going to take a peek, and that was all. It was… curiosity. A strong, unbearable sense of curiosity that made it impossible to ignore, impossible to just move on. A yawning hunger… just a little break. It  **wasn’t** anything that could really distract me from Buck for long anyway.

I took a minor detour and began to follow the scent, trying to place it. It took me a bit to recognize it as something ‘sweet’- but when I did, I had to stop and get a hold of myself. I stood in the middle of a dilapidated alley, combat boots crunching over broken beer bottle shards and rumpled McDonald's wrappers, illuminated only by the dim, flickering glow of a single bare lightbulb in an abandoned street lamp overhead. 

I stood alone for a moment, closing my eyes against the chill night air and trying to get a better sense of just what the hell I thought I was doing. As it turned out, that only made it worse, because I could smell it all the more clearly like that, without visual cues to interfere. 

I knew then that I was smelling something sweet- and it didn’t prepare me for what I was going to find, at the end of the alley. 

With my eyes closed, I was finally able to hear it, underneath the already muted background noise of central London. Underneath the rolling tires on the asphalt behind me, underneath the occasional shout and jeer of the lone drunk shambling on their way, there was a faint squelching. It was minute, infrequent, and came and went in short bursts. It was as if something gooey was being meticulously kneaded, being squashed and stretched and collapsed again.

I know that should have been my cue to turn back. I don’t know  **what** I was thinking at that moment- every alarm bell was going off in my brain, and I only had an umbrella and some pepper spray to defend myself with. I should have started running.

But that sweet scent was coming from the end of the alley.

I had to  _ know. _

I tried to make up for walking headlong into a horror movie by being as careful about it as possible. My boots may not exactly be made for stealth, and I may not be nearly thin enough to squeeze myself into any narrow hiding places, but I can be quiet when I need to be. If nothing else, I’m a good runner, and even if it doesn’t look like it most of this fat is pure muscle. If worse came to worst, I was prepared to fight tooth and nail and umbrella to boot. I had no qualms about breaking any bones if need be and still don’t.

So I crept along as quiet and as slow as I could. One foot was placed in front of the other, steady in my snail’s pace as the meaty squelching was joined by the gentle slurp of a tongue, laving over something damp and unmoving. It was a wet, sickening sound, and my stomach roiled as if I could almost feel the slimy drool running from a gaping mouth, running down the back of my neck…

Every once in a while, the sound would stop, and I would freeze in place too. I would stare into the shadowed depths of the alley, watching a blackened shape that looked almost like what should have been a human shift, rock minutely back and forth. It would rock back, then forth, then back, and then forward one more time before digging its hands- hands that were oddly shaped, as if the palm on top of the wrist were gone and all that was left were thin wrists that were all fingers- into its unholy meal, resuming the ever-present pattern of squelching meat and gentle open-mouthed chewing.

It was- [laughs] God, pardon the joke, but- but it was like red light green light. If you replaced the punishment being your twin stealing your spot on the couch for a week with some terrifying monster eating your brains for a midnight snack, I mean. That sounds bad, but listen; That’s what it felt like at the time, a situation too fantastical to be real-

Until I stepped close enough to see the bloodless brain being consumed in front of me.

Not until I saw its blood, bright, candy red, and realized that was what smelled so overwhelmingly sweet.

My heart stopped in my chest even as my mind raced- because if someone like me, who couldn’t normally smell anything like this, could smell and be led on by it, what did normal people smell? Was it even more enticing to them than it was to me? Was that what had happened to the dark-haired woman on the ground, her skull split wide open and her jaw smashed to bits by what I was sure were the monster’s teeth scattered around it? 

What was I supposed to do? There wasn’t anything  **I** could do in this situation- I was powerless against the sharp claws and teeth of this creature, this being with limbs that were just too long to be human, crouching with knees bent backward like a rabbit’s, with hair so thick and unruly that it looked more like a mane of fur- I was powerless when, as I took a startled step back, I accidentally stepped on some glass. The solid  _ crunch  _ of black leather shattering the piercing quiet of the beast’s meal sounded, and I thought that I was dead.

Its head snapped up, but it looked  _ wrong.  _ Pointed and elongated ears tilted back as its head swiveled on its neck- and its  _ neck  _ was the worst of all, looking less like a feature on a physical body and more like synthetic skin had been stretched crudely over flexible rubber, shown in only the slightest bend to the back of a slightly-too-long throat. 

Its eyes were toxic green as it stared back at me, one claw still hooked in its mouth. I don’t know how, or why, or- or even what struck me in that moment, but for some reason, I focused on its teeth. All the sharp shark’s teeth on the ground must have belonged to the monster, but in its mouth, most of its teeth were blunt, save for some slightly sharpened canines and front teeth being a tad too big. The thought of,  _ It’s discarded its first teeth,  _ struck me then, and it took everything I could not to collapse in revulsion.

I was terrified. Who wouldn’t be, when faced with something like that? I was terrified, caught like a- like a  _ Doe in headlights,  _ aha, isn’t that a thought? I- I 

[Pause. A momentary, shaky silence before she gives a hysterical laugh.]

I- that was a terrible thought, I’m- was caught up, prey before the hands of something else, and that was my only thought! Great last words, right? Lord knows that if Buck came back and that was on my epitaph, he’d follow me into the afterlife to chew me out for that pun himself.

It was that subsequent thought that, as I mutely watched the creature unfold itself to its full, hellish height, gave me the push I needed to run. 

If I died there. If I died, right there, with this thing- what, sucking my blood out before anything, like a bad vampire flick?- Buck wasn’t going to have a family to come home to. He was going to show up to an empty apartment, and he would never even know what really did me in. Never know that I was, at that moment, too weak to do anything but tremble. And if, by some miracle of fate, he did find out? How could I move on if my last moments on earth were doing nothing?

I was going to survive. I  **was** going to run away and get out of this. And that’s what I did.

The creature moved bizarrely, hopping onto the wall and then the roof of the building to my side with nothing more than a powerful kick and some climbing to propel himself up. By then, the street was just about devoid of life, so there were few others around bar the odd still-about drunk or late night civilian to see the creature moving just out of view of cameras, out the corners of eyes, doggedly pursuing me with its strange limbs and wide, angry eyes.

I don’t know how long I was running. The adrenaline and fear mixed together in a fervent cocktail- I ran and ran, pumping my legs faster as that sickly sweet scent of the blood dripping from the creature’s neck wafted from on high like a honey trap. I didn’t even know what I was  **doing.** I just had to get  _ away. _

I get to the riverbank of the Thames, trying to think through my panic about what to do now that I was the prey- and for some reason, the thing that popped into mind was that, maybe, if I could wash the scent off of me somehow, I could evade the creature. The sweet smell, which had at first been so new and fascinating, made my skin crawl even as it grew fainter and fainter the closer I veered toward the water edge, and I was five steps from just hauling myself into the bay before I realized- what the genuine  _ fuck  _ was I doing?

I’m not normally the type to panic like that. Even when I was caught up in frightful situations before, I used to be able to find some semblance of a level head- but the scent was overwhelming my senses, and the shadows out the corner of my eyes seemed just a little too long to be right, and for some reason, some wires got crossed in my brain. I was seized by such fear that, even as I felt my senses return to me, I wasn’t sure what had really just happened.

If I were lucky, that would be where the story ends. I would have just stayed near the edge of the water, catching my breath as the last vestiges of that- that sweet scent slowly faded away, leaving me breathing in the cold, crisp air from the river. Then, following it, I could find my way home and hide until the morning came.

Instead, I heard a splash from a nearby dock.

I turned my head just in time to see a dark shape slipping down into the water, black hair fanning up from the momentum of her fall backward. It wasn’t exactly a long fall in, but- at what I was guessing was three in the morning, on a dock where the only witnesses would have been the docked fishing boats and whatever was left of the fish? It just seemed- seemed really strange and worrying. I waited for a bit, thinking that maybe she was just taking an ill-advised, late-night dip- but a minute turned into three, and then into five, and she hadn’t come up for air.

Apparently I still wasn’t thinking as clearly as I should have been, because I was soon rushing down the dock, searching the water frantically for the woman that had just thrown herself in. That part was already damn murky, and the blackness of the night didn’t help. Shoving my messenger bag off, I knelt down on the splintering wood and took a breath. Then, I shoved my head under the water, opening my eyes. Which was a terrible idea, because it was still murky and dark, but now there was the added bonus of my eyes stinging like hell and the taste of dirty river water flooding my tongue.

I wasn’t thinking about the eye-eating bacteria that were probably going to get me, though. The only thing on my mind was the wisps of dark hair, floating and suspended from the water. I jammed my arm in, trying to tug on what I hoped was her collar. My hand grasped something fabric, at least, and I shoved my other arm in to start pulling. 

As it turns out, some jackass just left a ton of nets in the water. Normally I’d be ready to set fire to said jackass’s prized photographs for something like that, but for once, I was glad of the litter. Though, now that I think about it… it really was floating a little too close to the top, wasn’t it? You’d think those nets would have sunk right down with the weight of an entire woman on top, but they stayed within arm’s reach. It just meant that I didn’t have far to pull the woman up, and didn’t have far to pull up my wrist as a sharp, ragged piece of wood tore into it, giving me a nasty cut. 

[There is the sound of rustling fabric] See? Oh, don’t give me that look. It's not that bad. And I promise this is going somewhere.

The first thing I noticed about her as I rolled her onto her side on the dock was how frail she seemed. Her coat, waterlogged as it suddenly was, looked like it was just about swallowing her up, long black hair and all.

The second thing I noticed was that she looked exactly like the woman that the creature had just been eating.

I froze, looking down at her wet face as slowly, surely, she opened her eyes. She was breathing fine- meaning that she hadn’t swallowed any water, meaning that she had been holding her breath, meaning that she hadn’t meant to do anything  _ drastic-  _ which was  _ such  _ a relief that I could barely contain myself- and she looked up at me. We were the only two there, on the dock, illuminated by the faint moonlight that dipped in and out of the clouds gathering above.

There was, well, a third thing I noticed. I noticed that she was pretty. I don’t know if the thought came to me because finding random women cradled in equally random nets was too whimsical to be a real thing, or just because I’m gay, but the thought was there and her eyelashes were fluttering and she was looking at me.

At first, her gaze was murky, as though she was waking from a dream. Then they came back into razor focus as we locked eyes, staring intently at me.

I asked her if she was okay. It was the only thing that came to mind as I sat back, allowing her room to sit up. She looked back at me but didn’t say anything, turning her gaunt face towards her shoulder a bit. Which was  _ very  _ much not the reaction of someone who was okay. I glanced her up and down, trying to find bruises or wounds or needle marks (because drugs were a viable explanation for this, right?), but she seemed totally unharmed. Just incredibly, totally tired. “Are you okay?” I asked again, and she finally shrugged. 

For a few seconds, we just sat there. I mean, what was I supposed to say? ‘Sorry for lecturing, but you really shouldn’t be falling into random rivers unless you have the common decency to do so in the middle of the day’? ‘Why aren’t you dead’? No- so we sat there, for a few moments, in awkward silence.

Finally, her eyes drifted to my wrist, and they narrowed. “... Your arm…” Those were the first words she ever said to me. 

“Yeah,” was all I could think to say.

She gently held my arm, with such gentleness that I almost stopped shivering from the cold of being partially submerged. “May I?” She asked. I was about to say that, well sure, she could patch it up, but I wasn’t entirely sure how any emergency bandages she’d had on her might have survived the midnight swim, and that was the moment she put her mouth over the wound and started to suck.

Like. This random woman who I’d just maybe-saved, and who was also supposed to be dead and brainless, was sucking my blood. The bloodsucking itself didn’t feel… supernatural, or anything. It just felt like someone was sucking at my skin.

I think that was the point where I took a hard look at myself- I took a look at myself and said, “Doe Simmons, what is even going on anymore,” and decided that after the night I’ve had, this may as well have been happening. It was two-three-four in the morning and an attractive maybe-ghost woman was sucking my blood. And I still needed to find my brother in a few hours once my train left.

The woman thanked me and, after wiping off her mouth with the back of her hand, looked absolutely relieved. “Tastes like blood.” I was still bleeding, of course, because life was inconvenient and was denying me possibly-vampiric healing spit or whatever was supposed to be happening, but not as much now. 

“Yeah,” I said, dazed and so very confused, “it’s blood.” 

“Yes. Just normal, human blood.” She still sounded relieved, so I just told myself, it was whatever. Maybe I should have gone for coffee. But, then again, I also didn’t want to leave this woman alone on the docks, after seeing… whatever she was even trying to do. 

So I asked her if she wanted to come with me to Tesco’s.

* * *

“...”

“...” 

“... What?” Doe Simmons, apparent jester, asked. “What’s with those looks.”

“... That’s it?” Jon asked, utterly perplexed. 

“I mean, we went to Tesco’s and that was about it. Yeah.” Doe nodded.

Martin was smiling, but it was strained, and just as baffled as Jon felt. “So a possibly dead woman sucked your blood and your first thought, to keep an eye on her, was to… bring her with you to Tesco’s?”

“Yes. That is what I have stated for the record.” Doe said. Jon and Martin stared at Doe for a moment longer before, slightly miffed, she asked, “What? Do you not believe me?”

“... Statement ends.” Jon said, clicking off the recorder. 

“Ah. So you don’t.” Doe said, face hardening. She let out a slow breath as she stood up. “Alright- fine then. Thanks.” 

“W-wait, um,” Martin started to quietly say, “I actually-”

“Wait a moment- if you’ll sit down, I have a few follow up questions,” Jon said, as professionally as he could manage. Doe, reluctantly, did so. “How has the search for your brother gone?”

Doe tensed, hands clenched into fists as she smiled. It wasn’t a happy one. “Well, want to know something really funny? The little bastard turned up that morning when I was dragging myself back to the flat. He tried to buy my forgiveness with apology pancakes. Doesn’t pay the pounds I wasted on that train trip, hm?”

“As for Salesa- his first name wouldn’t happen to have been Mikaele, would it have?”

“Maybe. I didn’t learn it as a matter of principle.”

“Is he a regular at your auction house?”

“No. It’s the first time I saw the man- but he’s infamous in the antiquing community. Everyone hates the guy.”

“Did the woman ever give a name?”

Here, Doe hesitated. “... No. She didn’t. She didn’t really talk much at all, after the whole bloodsucking thing. I guess she was shy, and I didn’t want to scare her off, so I didn’t mention the-the thing. I saw earlier.” 

“Right. Well,” Jon paused, thinking for a moment, “we’ll investigate this on all fronts, and if we have anything… we’ll let you know.” 

Doe’s gaze grew sharp. “... Meaning you’re just going to throw it away, huh.”

“No. I do believe it,” Jon lip curled, “or at least, some of it. We will have to keep in mind that you gave us a fake statement earlier. Martin had to run around fact-checking it all and leading to worse than nothing, and I prefer not leaving my assistants with dead ends.” Unless he needed to, but there hadn’t been a strategic need for that yet. 

“Absolutely  _ lovely,”  _ Doe said as she stood. “I’ll just show myself out.” 

“By all means,” Jon said. He didn’t have time to deal with anyone’s crankiness, and he already had her statement. 

"Oh, Jesus Jon," Martin muttered under his breath.

She marched across the room, hand twisting around a door handle. Martin cleared his throat delicately, speaking up, “Ah, Miss Simmons? That’s a broom closet.” Doe shot a glare over her shoulder as she defiantly threw open the door, revealing it to, in fact, be a broom closet. She glared inside of it as though the bottle of febreeze had slighted her personally. Martin moved across the room and asked, “Would you like me to show you out?”

“... Yes please.” Doe said, somewhat dejected as she finally put her cap back on. 

With Martin leading Doe Simmons out so that she didn’t get lost for a third time, Jon was left in his office, thinking over what was essentially three separate statements wrapped up into one. He wasn’t lying when he said he believed her- Doe Simmons had certainly been more truthful this time, actually speaking about her life and experiences.

In order there was the case of Mikaele Salesa’s acquisition of a bow and arrows, which, considering his track record, meant that Miss Simmons had come into contact with an artefact; the case of the vampire eater, consuming yet another brain and seeming all the more monstrous; and the case of the woman in the nets, who Doe Simmons claimed to have watched the corpse of. 

She wasn’t lying about Salesa. She didn’t appear to be lying about the mystery woman at the end, either- but there was something about her encounter with the vampire eater that rattled something in Jon’s skull. There were things in that account that didn’t register correctly.

Playing the tape back, Jon could feel a growing buzz in the back of his head. It ached like his cells were being rearranged in the neural activity of television static, clawing at the back of his head so insistently that the only thing that could anchor Jon in the moment was grinding his teeth hard enough to feel them grinding together. There were just- the details all seemed too detailed to be made up on the spot, and it fit into her overall narrative, and yet… it felt like there was something off about her statement. 

His brain throbbed, threatening to ooze out his ears. His fingers instinctively reached for the mug that Martin usually left by his side, only to curl around empty air. Right- it wasn’t quite time for Martin to bring it, was it…

There was something hidden in this account. Something that was somehow more unsettling than if Jon had tried to record the statement digitally or attempted to handwave something that seemed a little  _ too  _ horrifying to be real. The truth was in there, and loads of it, but it was a wide net being cast, with something slipping through the holes.

And Jon still had to think about his investigation for the next night, too.

God. Jon could really use some tea.


	8. If I Could Set Pretty Dreams Beneath Your Lashes / Perhaps Your Weary Eyes Would Still

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doe Simmons and Emily Hawthorne meet in the archives.
> 
> Martin continues trying to be the glue that holds the archival staff together. This is ill-advisable for any number of reasons, the largest of which also being the subject of even more ill-advised affections.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I Got Done With Season 3, and that's all you need to know about the several month long hiatus I needed to take from this vhfbkjfv So now we're back in business! Mostly with OCs, to be honest. And also JonMartin being fraught with that Season 2 Tension Babyyyy
> 
> I hope you enjoy!!

Doe Simmons was still quite put out when Martin began to escort her through the winding hallways away from Jon’s office. Rightfully so, if Martin was being wholly honest- while he had a few… thoughts, on the entirety of Miss Simmons’ statement, to be so curtly dismissed _without_ mentioning the bit about the old statement… it was unnecessary. He knew Jon could have very well been more delicate with shooing her out, as he had with Miss Hawthorne.

After a beat of tense silence, Martin cleared his throat and smiled apologetically. “I’m… really sorry? About Jon towards the end, there. He’s just, ah…” He thought back to what he’d walked in on before the statement- Jon, perched in his chair in an awkward position, shoving a drawer closed and looking up with mistrustful eyes. In no fit state, but Martin wasn’t able to deny this statement, once he heard the bit at the end. He’d make it up to Jon with tea in a bit. And also a word. It was worrying to see him “... Stressed, lately.”

Doe huffed out a little breath, reaching a hand up to fiddle with the edge of her hat as she shifted from bitter anger to resigned pouting. “Yeah, well. Guess I can’t blame him there. Fuck all big institute here full of spooks ‘n specters and whatnot- that’s got to get in your head.”

Martin’s smile tinged with some sad bemusement. If only half the people who breezed in knew… “Well, you could definitely say that.” 

They lapsed into a slightly more comfortable silence, which Martin was honestly grateful for. As much as he had enjoyed Miss Doe’s company, she was a bit of a chatterbox- which wasn’t bad! It was just that Martin was never quite sure what to say or how to get a word in edgewise without seeming rude. While leading her through the Archives, he’d let her talk and occasionally answer her questions about the architecture and general layout of the building. She was shaping up to be an architecture buff rivaling Tim in her enthusiasm! Even now, despite having gone quiet, her eyes wandered around the shelves upon shelves of filing cabinets and wooden structures holding numerous boxes of paper from two hundred years of operation, glittering with keen fascination.

After her eyes stopped lingering on a somewhat defined hairline fracture to one of the columns, her head suddenly snapped up to look at Martin, blinking owlishly. “Oh uh, Blackwood?”

“Martin’s fine,” Martin assured.

“Martin, right- is this the way out of the Institute?” Doe asked, eyebrows furrowing a bit. “Got a bit caught up trying to date these stacks you got here, but I don’t remember this being the way?”

“It’s the long way round,” Martin explained, “going through the Research department a floor up and a bit further back- I needed to pick something up regarding a Miss Hawthorne’s case…”

Just like Martin expected, Doe perked up at that. It wasn’t definitive proof that the Emily Hawthorne who had barged in earlier that week, drowning in panic and a coat with the sleeves rolled up so she could rub the red lines where her nails had scratched a little too hard into her skin, was the same as Doe’s- but Martin thought it a bit too close a coincidence. 

If Doe recognized the name, that meant she may have lied about not getting a name from the mystery woman in the nets. It was certainly something to keep in mind.

“Wouldn’t happen to be anything haunted coming from there?” Doe asked, eyes shining with interest. “Bet you have all sorts of scares rattling around in there!”

“Oh, that would all be Artefact Storage- it’s not kept with the Research wing, though the researchers are certainly welcome to them,” Martin explained as he led the way up the utilitarian stairs. 

“Just researchers?” Doe asked, seeming a smidge hopeful, “What about independently employed hobbyists…?”

“I’m afraid not,” Martin rubbed the back of his neck, glancing sidelong at the shorter woman, “I thought you said you were an auctioneer?”

“I am, but that wasn’t what I originally signed up for- I’m an academic, you know? Student of anthropology,” Doe said, grin widening, “I actually did my dissertation on the intersection of popular culture and theatre in Athens.”

“Oh!” Martin said. It was always fun, hearing people talk about their dissertations- having never had the chance to do anything himself (or… go to college, for that matter), it was nice to see what they were so passionate about learning. “Was there anything, in particular, you were looking at? Any specific events, or…”

“What I ended up going with,” Doe said, grin slipping into something mischievous, “ was the phallic symbolism present in Greek art around 400 BCE, and particularly how those glorified ideals of the male form got translated onto the stage as big honkin’ wooden cocks to simultaneously uphold that ideal and emasculate the actors,”

Martin’s eyes widened, choking slightly on air he hadn’t even known he’d taken in. That… wasn’t where he expected that to go, “W-Why- actually, wait, why were they using… wooden… dildos? For all these plays?” Doe snorted, giving a little laugh at Martin’s fumbling.

“I mean, it wasn’t for _all_ the plays- it was just the one. _Lysistrata?_ ” Doe reined herself back in a touch, “but it was the one that rubbed salt in all the wounds the Peloponnesian War left. See, the basis of the play is that the women of Greece are right tired of their menfolk still killing each other without any end in sight, so they conspire to make them stop the war by having the old women take over the acropolis. The young women have the job of making the men too damn horny to keep fighting- basically commentary on...” 

Martin waited for her to continue, more than a little interested now that the initial shock had died down. But she had trailed off for good, eyes fixed at the top of the stairs, where the hallway and door leading to research lay. The hallway that was very much not as empty as Martin had assumed, with a familiar figure engulfed in an oversized coat staring back. 

“Miss Emily?” Martin called up the stairs. The woman startled, the ponytail where she had collected most of her stringy black hair falling over her shoulder as she looked back at Martin and Doe with wide eyes. There were still deep purple bags under her eyes, but she was looking a little less haggard than she had before. That was a relief. “It’s been a little while!”

“A-Ah…” The woman quietly stammered, eyes darting down the hall and then back, “Yes, that is- that is true… Mister Blackwood?”

“Martin’s fine, really!” He gently nudged Doe as he passed her on the stairs. Doe started into action after a moment more, bounding up the remaining few steps two at a time so that she could inflict the hurricane force of her compressed presence on poor Emily Hawthorne, presumably for the second time. 

Doe stuck out her hand, chattering the entire way, “Hey, Em-! Can I call you Em? Good to see you got home safe and sound the other night! You’re not aching or anything anywhere are you? Nothing’s left over from Tuesday? Oh- the name’s Doe- you know that, but it was late and it looked like you had a lot going on or, I mean just on your mind! I don’t mean to make it sound like- like there was anything too weird- okay it was a little weird- and you’re here so I’m guessing you made a statement though, and then again if you’re here there might have been-?”

“… please slow down,” Emily politely requested, gently taking Doe’s hand. The resulting handshake was gentle, and Doe did calm down, the tips of her ears going red as she smiled sheepishly. Emily gave a tiny smile, then- just the barest upturn of her thin, cracking lips as she quietly said, “Um, I- I didn’t really get all of that, but I’m… glad, you remembered me?”

Doe blinked, baffled. “Of course I’d remember you! You- meeting you made my night unforgettable,” Her smile was soft with wonder, “Well, that and the man-eating monster I s’ppose-”

“The man-eating what,” Emily tensed, eyebrows furrowing. “That’s- not exactly anything to be…”

“Speaking of that man-eating monster, Miss Emily,” Martin said, smoothly coming to stand beside Doe, “would you have happened to tell your caseworker about your night, last Tuesday? Particularly the portion where you threw yourself into the River Thames and then drank this young woman’s blood.”

“...” Emily paled, which was confirmation enough. 

“This isn’t to try and accuse you of anything!” Martin was quick to assure, smiling politely, “I just mean that, since I’ve gotten Miss Simmons’ statement, there appeared to be a lot of similarities- both with her description of you and in regards to your own statement.”

“... Do I have to… give another?” Emily asked, shoulders drawing in as she seemed to physically wilt, “Another one of those… statements. To the Archivist.”

“I… don’t believe that will be necessary to give in person, no,” Martin said, thinking back to Jon. “You would have to write it down, though. Would you be feeling up to that?”

“Yes,” Emily said, relieved, “Speaking to him, was… it was…”

“Frustrating?” Doe jumped in, ignoring Martin's pointed frown, “Annoying as sin? Made you wanna punch him right in his squirrely little teeth?”

“... Tiring,” Emily delicately decided on. “Like… everything spilled out. Even one or two things I um, wasn’t planning on mentioning.”

“Yeah, that tracks,” Doe said, reaching over to pat her shoulder sympathetically. Emily tensed even more, seemingly unsure of how to handle the touch. “Same thing happened to me- ended up ranting about this one jackass who’s gonna be shipping out with some stuff he lowballed for at my job.”

“Oh? That sounds like a lot…” Emily quietly said, and Martin took that moment to begin leading them toward the front lobby of the Archives. 

Rosie glanced up at them as they passed, taking in Doe’s enthusiastic gesturing and excited jabbering for Emily to “mark this down, seriously, the stuff you can learn about a building from its soft spots…” and nodded approvingly with a little twinkle in her eye. Martin, trailing behind the two, answered with his own little shrug. Whatever Rosie was trying to insinuate there, he certainly couldn’t confirm nor deny anything- he didn’t know Doe or Emily well enough for that, and from his understanding, they didn’t know each other well enough for that either.

They settled around the surprisingly spacious breakroom table. Emily asked for earl grey again. Doe asked for the same, brewed strongly and with twelve sugars.

Martin’s smile twitched a bit at the corner, “I thought you said you didn’t taste anything sweet?”

“Mmm, figures you’d have been paying attention,” Doe said, grinning, “and I wasn’t lying! Sometimes I just like to test myself, you know?” She chuckled, smoothing one of her bangs out between her fingers, “See if the twenty-odd year medical condition got magically whisked away- which, apparently, could happen now. You know. Because magic is real.”

“That’s a... way to put it,” Martin said, and he bustled around with the teacups. He listened to Doe drift back into a conversation with Emily over games they’d apparently played with their brothers as children. Apparently, finding random crap in the woods and pretending to brew it into a potion with a stick was a universal phase for adventurous young girls.

Gently setting the mugs in front of both women (and silently wincing at Doe’s cup, looking less like tea and more like some brackish, gritty pile with sand at the bottom), he turned to make his own mug, saying offhandedly, “I’ll grab the form for you, Miss Emily- then I’ll leave you to it.”

“Uhm,” Emily uttered, voice so faint that Martin barely heard it. “L. Leave me to it?”

Martin turned to look at her, smiling reassuringly, “Yes- we usually do that, so that you can have privacy. It can be rather a lot… but if you’d rather I stay-”

“Er! That!” Emily was quick to say, hands trembling around her mug as it made a solid _click_ against the table. It was the cat one that Sasha used to like using, “-um, that isn’t, necessary. I know you have other, things, and you really were a great help last time, and-”

“It’d be no trouble! Unless you’re uncomfortable with it,” Martin was quick to say, “It’s all up to you, really.”

“Oh… then if… it’s alright…” Emily cleared her throat, glancing at Doe, “Could Miss Doe…?”

“I don’t see why not,” Martin nodded. Despite the blood donation Doe unwittingly gave upon their first meeting, it didn’t appear as though Emily meant any harm to Doe. Even if she did, Doe seemed rather well prepared to fend for herself, if the outline of the hilt hidden in one of the bulky pockets of her coat were anything to go by. And, well, they did have cameras.

“Just Doe is fine! Really!” Doe eagerly said, posture going rod straight immediately, “I’ll stay, if you need- I don’t got anywhere else to go this afternoon, so, y’know,”

“Right,” Emily said, the relief in her voice palpable. 

Martin turned back to making tea for himself and Jon at the little counter adjacent to the table, listening to the comfortable silence that descended. Then, behind him, he heard Doe say, voice impossibly soft, “So, that night… I know you’re gonna write it, but. Could you… tell me why you went out?”

Martin stirred two sugars into his own tea and milk into Jon’s as Emily seemed to hesitate, barely making a sound. Then, Emily said, so quietly that Martin had to slow the stirring lest the clink of metal on cheap ceramic drowned out the noise, “Me and- and my older brother… Tommy, we… had a bit of a fight, is all.”

“Oh…” Doe said, voice gentle. “Was it… was it bad, or… I mean, it was enough that you went out,”

“Pretty- pretty bad, yeah,” Emily said, taking a shallow breath. “I know I- I shouldn’t have gone out. Tuesday was so foggy, and there wasn’t anyone at all- but… You know. How it is.”

There were several long, deliberate sips of tea. Martin turned back with several leaflets of paper for Emily to write her statement on, trying to figure out the best course of action to break the melancholy air that settled over them. Emily staring into her cup, two spindly hands curled around it. Doe looking back at her while biting her lower lip, the slimmest flash of teeth shining from the space in her cleft lip. 

Before he could work up the nerve to say anything, Doe broke the silence with a boisterous voice, leaning back in her seat. “Course I do! God, you shoulda seen my twin when he learned I was the taller one- he tells me, point-blank, he’s gonna have to cut an inch or two off my heels!”

Emily startled, blinking owlishly at Doe as a nervous little laugh bubbled out. “... What?”

“True story, Emily, I’m telling you,” Doe nodded sagely, as if wholly oblivious to the mood that had been weighing down on their shoulders just moments ago, “And I told him- I tell him, I’d love to see him bloody well try it, _Buck!”_ She exaggerated the ‘k’ at the end until it barely sounded like a letter anymore. “Just you do it _Bucko!_ You take my heel, and I get to take that Troll doll monstrosity off your head!” 

Martin gently settled the papers and a pen in front of Emily, mouthing to her that she could begin at her own pace, and retrieved the mugs. Doe did not, for a single moment, let up. Emily didn’t seem to mind. “See, he had this _abhorrent_ shade of neon orange going on at the time...”

Martin gently closed the door to the break room and put up a makeshift “do not disturb” sign, just in case Sasha returned early and maybe wanted something to eat. Or drink. 

Sure, Martin hadn’t actually seen her eat in months, and it was kind of worrying him since she seemed to be getting a little too thin, but well, what could he do? Sasha didn’t seem to want to talk to anyone outside of work anymore, and well, Martin had never been particularly close with her. Maybe enough to share drinks and little nonthreatening secrets- not enough for her to tell him if something was bothering her.

He shook his head to clear those thoughts. Martin didn’t really… have any way, to bridge the gap with her. Tim was better suited to that, but he wasn’t in the best place after Prentiss, and…

Martin gingerly knocked on the door to Jon’s office, not wanting to dwell too much on weaving webs to bring them all back in together. He still had his work cut out for him, especially with Jon- Jon, who didn’t seem to hear him, and who was murmuring fevered notes to himself as the scratching rewind of a tape recorder played.

_“-It_ **_wasn’t_ ** _anything that could-”_

Static

 _“-know_ **_what-”_ **

Static.

 _“-_ **_I_ ** _could do in this-”_

Martin let himself in, wincing. He’d have been hoping that Jon wasn’t looking for secret messages in places again- though, at least this time, it was secret messages to do with a case. And not the one that had taken place underneath these very archives.

“Jon?” Martin tentatively said, watching his thumb mash against the rewind button. Doe’s voice repeated what they both already knew. It couldn’t have been more than forty minutes since Martin had been in here, listening to that very statement. “... What are you doing?”

Jon didn’t say anything for a long moment, but when he looked up at Martin, he seemed impossibly more tired than Martin had ever seen him. And that was saying something, seeing as those statements really took a lot out of Jon already. “... Work.”

“It sounds rather like you’re giving yourself a headache,” Martin tried to quip, but Jon just stared at him with slightly glassy, manic eyes and Martin guessed at why that fell flat. “I have tea,”

“Right,” Jon said, rewinding the tape again.

“And maybe you should… not do that?” Martin gently suggested, setting the mug down in front of the man.

Jon regarded him with pure annoyance. “Not do my job?”

“Not be obsessive over your job?” The words tumbled out before Martin even realized he’d thought them, but the second they were out, he winced. They hung in the air, heavy and accusatory enough to take even Jon aback. “I’m- sorry. You’re doing your best, really, but- but you should maybe. Give it a little rest, for now? At least with this one.”

“Why?” Jon bit out, hackles rising, “It’s not as if _you’re_ going to be any help on this case, and _Tim’s_ still off in la-la land doing whatever it is he even does now-” He tried to stand, too much like a cat trying to make himself bigger for it not to be deliberate. 

Then Jon staggered, catching his hands on the edge of the desk with fevered desperation, breath coming out harshly. Martin quickly set his own tea down and rounded around the desk, steadying Jon with a hand on the elbow and a carefully maintained look. Martin was good at tacitly not commenting on how tense Jon suddenly became underneath his grip. He waited for a few moments, observing how sweat beaded at Jon’s brow and at the tremble of his fingers, and just hoped that he wasn’t the one causing it. 

“Jon,” Martin said firmly, “I think- you’re not being very fair with Tim.” At least with Tim. Martin didn’t know if Tim had mentioned anything to Jon about how Emily’s statement had affected him, or if Jon had just spied it, but… He couldn’t say anything on that front. “But more importantly, I think you need a _break._ Maybe have a little lie-down, or something.”

“I think I will be… quite fine, Martin.” Jon grit out through clenched teeth. He didn’t move his arm away from Martin, though, so Martin was counting that as a win. 

“Let’s at least have some tea together, yeah?” Martin asked, primarily because he was sure if he left Jon alone Jon would surely go right back to his work. “I-in here, I mean. Just. Tea.” 

Martin realized that was the worst kind of way to phrase that because Jon’s attention was suddenly laser-focused on glancing between him and the mugs of tea. Martin liked to think that he had the attitude of someone who wouldn’t go around poisoning his colleagues, generally, but with how odd Jon had been lately… 

“I believe,” Jon said instead, extracting himself from Martin’s hold and starting to step away from the desk, “in that case if you insist on badgering me, I may… take you up, on the lie-down.” He was avoiding looking at the lamps on his desk head on, Martin noticed. “So if you don’t mind-”

“I-!” Martin started to say, but thought better of it. Instead he said, “I’ll grab a few blankets for the cot, then? Since I, took the quilt off of it before,” 

Jon groaned, looking almost like himself before the pockmark scars that dotted his skin like constellations that it made Martin’s chest ache. “Of course you did. Just-” He tried to leave the safety of his desk, swayed, and immediately began to crumple under his own weight.

Martin quickly steadied him once again, biting his lip. “... Would you… like some help, getting into the cot, then?”

“...” Jon didn’t say anything. He just nodded, a jerky, deeply unsettled movement that had Martin close to another ‘sorry’. Martin swallowed that sorry down and nodded back, carefully wrapping an arm around Jon’s shoulders and beginning to steer him into Document Storage. Martin tried to keep a reasonable distance between the both of them and tried not to pay attention to the few times that Jon brushed against his side when he had trouble walking straight, all frail and overwrought iron that Martin was half afraid to snap. 

Jon laid down and closed his eyes without much fuss, which was the worrying part. He lay with his back to the wall, face toward the door and one hand shoved awkwardly underneath the pillow, grasping. That was also worrying for an entirely different set of reasons.

Gently closing the door and leaving the room behind him in darkness, Martin ran a long-suffering hand down his face, leaning back against the door. 

“Christ, Jon,” He whispered, left side chilling in the slowly freezing air of the archives, “what am I going to do…?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time, on Dragonball- More Joe Spooky. that's it that's the plot

**Author's Note:**

> It's my first time writing these guys, so any kind of criticism is super appreciated!! I hope you enjoyed ^^


End file.
